Use of "Submit" in site copy is sterile and not as friendly and welcoming as it could be

[Karen Rustad]

All over the site, we have exhortations to users to "Submit media",
"Submit an item", or even "Submit yer media!".

First of all, the inconsistency (all of these links go the same
place!) is silly. Let's have a standard usage in site copy, and if
variance is needed, we can justify that later.

Second, I've never liked "submit" in web copy. At best, it's rather
formal programmer-ese. At worst, it carries a whiff of
authoritarian control ("YOU WILL SUBMIT"). Neither of these matches
the tone of the site.

What do we think of, say "Add [yer] media"? Or even "Add pictures"
-- we may as well be specific, we don't support anything else yet
:P

[Jef van Schendel]

FWIW, I totally agree. An alternative that comes to mind is "upload
X", but that's similarly geeky. "Add" sounds like a good, simple
solution to me.

Sadly I can't be of much help here, I'm not a great wordsmith,
especially not in English. :)

[Christopher Allan Webber]

"Add Media" maybe? It's three more characters than "Submit", but
probably worth it. :)

I don't think "Add" or other verbs on their own are very clear
either.

[Caleb Davis]

Thanks, Karen, for all these new, fantastic bugs!

Some verbs that come to mind:


-  share
-  post Then there is the goblin metaphor:
-  feed (as in, feed your hungry, hungry, hippo/goblin)

but then, what does it mean that we can only view items which
successfully passed through the goblin's digestive tract?

[Elrond]

Upping this to "Normal", because it affects translations. And it
doesn't look hard to fix, once the verb has been decided.

[Aaron Williamson]

I like "share" best, with one caveat: presumably, people will be
able to post media that isn't "shared" with anyone.

[Christopher Allan Webber]

One small comment: "upload" may be better in that it doesn't have
the "you will submit!" aspect, yet is still clear.

I think "share" probably will be problematic for the reasons Aaron
already noted.

/me notices that Redmine has "submit" at bottom of this page to
post this comment... /me submits!

[Manolinux aka Mu]

I like "upload" because it describes very well what I would be
doing, and I think nearly every person using Internet should
understand it.

I like "post" a little, because it is the term used in blogs, but I
think it implies publishing. Since I am not an English speaker, I
realized that I did not know the exact meaning of "post" outside
the blog context, but I looked on dict.org and I understand "post"
is either "sending a letter" or a bunch of things that imply
publishing something.

I dont like "share" because in my viewpoint it does not explain
what we are doing, If I see "share" on a website I understand that
is allowing access to an item already downloaded.

I have to note that my viewpoint is the one of a non English
speaking geek.

Anyway, I don't know if you have decided something yet.

[Jef van Schendel]

FWIW, here are Aaron's thoughts from the mailing list:

::

    I think our best option here is "post." It's not "friendly," but unlike "submit" 
    it doesn't have feudal/S&M connotations. "Share" is inaccurate for private
    media, "upload" incompletely describes the action, "feed" is cutesy/will have to
    be replaced for non-MG-branded installs, "add" is missing an indirect object
    ("add to what?"; this could apply to "post" but in actual usage doesn't as much).

Thanks for sharing these, Aaron! :)

[Jef van Schendel]

I've changed "Submit" to "Add". I think I got all the user-facing
strings, the rest hasn't been touched (and I'm not sure if they
should be).

[Jef van Schendel]

Closing this ticket.

[Will Kahn-Greene]

The original url for this bug was ​http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/466 .