Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/15595 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: base system Category: tasks Priority: normal Assigned to: stefan nagtegaal Reported by: bertboerland@www.drop.org Updated by: puregin Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal_set_message_new.patch (50.98 KB) The attached patch updates Stefan's earlier patch with a few corrections and tweaks to messages. The bulk of these are minor typos, corrections to noun/verb number agreement, consistent use of 'could not' vs. 'can not', etc. In includes/locale.inc, I have made the tone of messages slightly more formal by replacing '... file is broken, because...' in messages with '... file contains an error: ...'. While visiting the affected files, I also made minor fixes or improvements to other messages. I have re-written portions of the help text for locale.module. Please review and comment! :) puregin Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 14, 2005 - 05:59 : bertboerland@www.drop.org *My* drupal not *Yours*! I think that when one addresses the user or the administrator of a site, it is best to do this outside in instead of inside out. So when in the documentation the coder is referring to the site of the administrator, this site should be called "your site" (/inside out/) but "my site" (/outside in/). There are numours examples where the text in referring to "your"where "my"would be apopriate [1] There used to be some "your" in the userinterface for the enduser as well, but that has been solved in 4.5. Before that you had "my account", but "track your postings". This has now all beens replaced by "my"and "mine". If everybody agrees, lets also corect this for the administrator as well; my administrator, not yours ;-) [1] examples: admin/logs/referrers "...that point to your web site." admin/settings "General configuration options for your site" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 19, 2005 - 08:36 : stefan nagtegaal We should consistently use the 'passive voice', when returning messages using form_set_error() and drupal_set_message(). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 04:05 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal_set_message consistency part 1 of 2 (51.16 KB) first patch of 2 to make the drupal_set_message(), form_set_error() and watchdog() messages more consistent. please review/comment and apply.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 04:05 : stefan nagtegaal Setting status to Patch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 23, 2005 - 00:49 : puregin A big -1 from me on replacing "you" with "me" :) Regarding the use of the first person - I find it extremely awkward and confusing to see usage such as 'My Account', "Here are my recent posts", etc. From my perspective as a native speaker of English, I find that this kind of usage violates conventional "conversational context". To clarify, if I am communicating with another person *via* the medium of a program then I expect that person to follow the normal conventions of conversation, in particular, to say "me, my, I" when referring to him/herself, and "you, your, etc." when referring to me. If I am communicating with a program, I *also* expect it to follow conversational conventions. Particularly obsequious programs may always refer to themselves in an indirect second person: "This unworthy program was unable to execute your most excellent command, and will henceforth terminate itself" I have to say I really don't like this kind of interaction. I like a program that tells me straight up "I can't find my configuration files! Sorry, I'm giving up!" People like, understand, and are extremely good at direct conversational interaction. It's intuitively clear who is speaking and what the relation to the listener is. I might tolerate a page with title "My Account", but really, a message such as 'This page shows my site-wide referrer statistics. I can optionally view just the "external referrers" or the "internal referrers". Referrers are web pages, both local and on other sites, that point to your my site.' is just plain confusing and unclear. To quote Sendmail: "I refuse to talk to myself" Please don't inflict this gratuitous use of first person on us! Djun ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 23, 2005 - 05:28 : rivena Have to agree with Djun. You're going to run into a lot of problems changing all the you's to me's. It'd be creepy if my drupal install started talking about itself. Anisa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 24, 2005 - 04:57 : Dries I checked a couple other sites like Amazon.com, Apple.com, NYT and they all use 'your'. I suggest we use 'your' and that we document this guideline. The exception is Yahoo!, who seems to use 'My Yahoo!'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 24, 2005 - 10:30 : Bèr Kessels AFAIK its as follows: A site that offers services, will use " yours". Community sites will therefore use " your Profile". A site that is used by a single user, should use "my". Its My site, if I own that blog. But if I am but a part from a large community, they offer "your blog". Ber