Comment prompt text is misleading

[jane]

The comment form says, "Your email address will not be published."

It can be deceptive b/c people assume it's used for some sort of verification, not that it goes to the site owner/comment moderator, who could very well decide to publish it if he/she happens to be an unethical jerk. People complain about this in support forums and elsewhere every now and then. Quite trivial issue compared to most tickets, but would be nice to take care of it.

Suggestions for better text welcome.

The text, and "will not be published" as a subset, is pretty much universal on the web, dating to its original appearance in Classic and Kubrick. It's carried over to comment forms of other systems as well.

The word "published" is pretty clear. Also, it's pretty clear that by submitting your email address, it'll go somewhere.

I'm open for a new string, but I definitely can't think of one that isn't too long or too much of a deviation. We went down this path in #13026, because the original string in Twenty Ten was indeed pretty deceptive, and it was opted for the current string to match the historical string.

It's not deceptive as much as people are dumb need education sometimes. :-)

See also #13026, #14682

#18633 suggested "Your email address will only be visible to the blog owner".

"Your email address will only be visible to the blog owner".

That's sounds a lot more accurate. +1

Also from #18633:

Original discussion about this idea here: ​http://ryanmarkel.com/2011/09/08/your-email-address-may-not-be-published/

It "will only be visible to the blog owner" isn't really accurate. Authors, editors, and admins have access also.

Maybe a simple "(Not for display)" or something that doesn't make any action promises, but tries to just communicate intent would be a better path?

I think "not displayed" is a simple and straight forward enough statement. It doesn't promise that it will "never be published" but it's not overly vague either.

"not displayed with your comment" is another option, but maybe a little too wordy.

I've just noticed that WordPress.com uses the phrase "not published". This seems like a good, balanced statement.

Your email will not be displayed publicly.

Your email will not be displayed with your comment ... I think that's about as good as it's going to get.

Unless we did "Your email will only be visible to blog administrators" (though 'administrators' is the wrong word - managers? Runners? People who run this site and have access to all the wibbly wobbly back end magic.)

Wild idea: remove the text completely.

+1 to removing the text completely. There's no way to tell what the site author/owner will do with email addresses that are submitted, so the site shouldn't make any statement on it.

+1 for removing completely. Especially given that if there are other comments on the post, the user can see that no one else's email address has been displayed anyway.

Is this something that could be set in Discussion Settings? That way, responsibility for determining appropriate text devolves to the site's administrator. WP could provide an empty string as the default.

Decisions/Options

Hear you on that, John, but in this case it seems like removing even the option of setting that text is a bit draconian. That text has been a part of the WP tradition for some time, and its total removal without an easy recourse might be a bit much for some site admins. (I am playing devil's advocate here just a bit... not totally persuaded by my own logic.)

I hear you - but don't forget that the comment form can be completely controlled/replaced by the theme so it wouldn't be a huge loss, or hard to add back in. Many themes completely bypass the default form already :)

Very good point.

+1 for leaving it out.