Increase humanism in first comment

[Ipstenu]

In the vein of [30089], this patch proposes changing the name of the first commenter in new builds of WordPress.

The first comment has historically been left by "Mr WordPress" in order to indicate it's a comment left by a 'person.' One, therefore, cannot simply suggest we change this to 'WordPress' as that does not demonstrate humanity.

I propose one of the following choices:

• Mx WordPress - Mx is accepted as a ​gender-nonspecific title, however it could be difficult to translate into all languages.
• Captain WordPress - There is no gender involved and this could be translated, though it implies a ranking hierarchy that may be confusing.
• Wapuu - Wapuu has no gender, and we could use a wapuu@wordpress.org email address that uses Wapuu as a gravatar, however Wapuu is less likely to be known by new members of WordPress (and they are the most likely to see the comment and wonder what it is).
• A WordPress Commenter - This is the most clear about both what the darn thing is and who left it.

I'm attaching a patch for the last proposal, as I feel it's both the most understandable and translatable of the lot.

[Ipstenu]

Change 'Mr WordPress' to 'A WordPress Commentor'

[kirasong]

I like this idea and see no reason it should be "Mr WordPress" -- why would WordPress possibly have a gender?

While I'm partial to Wapuu for kawaii reasons, "A WordPress Commenter" is fine.

If so, let's swap out the final "o" for "e" in the patch.

[Ipstenu]

Jorbin'd

[jorbin]

This only has positives. I do think we have a chance to improve the overall first comment humanism and the education around comments.

I do like the idea of adding an email address and gravatar, and also explaining where the avatar comes from. This would help people understand where the avatars come from that they see. "A WordPress Commentator" seems like a person that would have a WordPress.org email address and a Wapuu gravatar.

[jorbin]

New patch adds an email for wapuu@…, an option for the email address of the first comment, and changes the text to refer to gravatar. This will need to be hooked up to gravatar. Ironically, this now both humanizes, but also dehumanizes (wapuuuizes?) the first comment.

@jeremyfelt - Can you review the multisite settings piece?
@Ipstenu - What do you think of this wapuuization?

[Ipstenu]

???? (Heart Eyes Emoji if that worked...)

I love this. All we have to do is get someone on Gravatar to hook up the email.

[rachelbaker]

♥️ This!

[jeremyfelt]

In general, all looks good from the multisite angle.

2 proposed changes In 36702.3.diff​:

• Insert first_comment_author at the end of the existing options array so that the patch is cleaner.
• Change the network settings text for the new option to "The email address of the first comment author on a new site." rather than "The email address of the author of the first comment on a new site.

[lukecavanagh]

Could the first commenter name, not be based off of the site title?

[rachelbaker]

Replying to lukecavanagh:

Could the first commenter name, not be based off of the site title?

I guess it is possible, although having dynamic data in demo/placeholder information can be confusing for new users. Can you elaborate on the "how" and "why" of your suggestion?

[lukecavanagh]

Replying to rachelbaker:

It already seems more personal that having such a generic first comment auto created on a new site. Its just a suggestion, the first dummy comment is normally deleted fairly quickly on new sites, along with sample page etc.

Replying to lukecavanagh:

Could the first commenter name, not be based off of the site title?

I guess it is possible, although having dynamic data in demo/placeholder information can be confusing for new users. Can you elaborate on the "how" and "why" of your suggestion?

[chriscct7]

36702.3.diff can be merged once the gravatar account is made.

[ocean90]

36702.3.diff​ has a typo: <a href="https://https://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a>.

[rachelbaker]

@ocean90 36702.4.diff​ should be good to go once the Gravatar account is setup.

[jorbin]

Anyone know who can help create the new email and gravatar account? @samuelsidler perhaps?

[samuelsidler]

What's the end goal here with creating wapuu@…? It seems it's to have give the default commenter a Gravatar. I think it'd be better to hack in a custom Gravatar than add an email address in perpetuity.

If we create wapuu@…, what do we expect the user experience should be of those that email it? Since it's in core by default and seen by "all" users, we should have an answer to that. Should emails get rejected / returned to sender? Should they get forwarded to /dev/null? Both of those experiences seem less than ideal for an in-product email address. What if we want to use wapuu@… as an official email address for some project in 5 or 10 years?

I don't have a plan on how to do it, but I think it'd be better if we faked a Gravatar for the default user without any email address.

[chriscct7]

One option is adding a wapuu default avatar and defaulting the new avatars to that instead of Mystery Man.

[rachelbaker]

Use wapuu as the default avatar option

[rachelbaker]

Replying to chriscct7:

One option is adding a wapuu default avatar and defaulting the new avatars to that instead of Mystery Man.

I took an initial swing at this in 36702.wapuu-default.diff​ but upon review I think that changing the default avatar from the bland "Mystery Person" to the colorful and fun "Wapuu" would be a step too far.
We could still add Wapuu to the default avatar option, and not make it the default. This is a smart solution to @samuelsidler's challenge, and could even open the door to cleaning up the Default Avatar list. I am looking AT YOU Wavatar!!

@jorbin What say you?

[rachelbaker]

minor spacing and url typo fix to prepare for commit

[jorbin]

Perhaps Mr. @samuelsidler is correct and it makes sense to not use up the fantastic wapuu@wordpress.org email address. I've updated the patch to remove the email address (though still keeping the reference to the gravatars as I think this is a chance for education).

What Say Y'all?

[ocean90]

Replying to rachelbaker:

We could still add Wapuu to the default avatar option, and not make it the default.

There are currently no plans for adding Wappu to Gravatar because of the reasons mentioned in ​this comment.

If we don't want to use wapuu@wordpress.org that's fine, but there are plenty of other options like wapuu@wordpress.example (proposed by @dd32) or wapuu@example.org.

[Ipstenu]

I think wapuu@example.org would be a better default, since ​http://example.org/ is built for that. Otherwise if someone later installs one of those 'spam email my commenters' plugins, they won't get bouncebacks.

That or we can just not include the wapuu email at first and circle back later.

[netweb]

Replying to Ipstenu:

I think wapuu@example.org would be a better default, since ​http://example.org/ is built for that. Otherwise if someone later installs one of those 'spam email my commenters' plugins, they won't get bouncebacks.

FWIW, example.org does not have any mx records, so any email to wapuu@example.org will bounce

[dd32]

Replying to Ipstenu:

I think wapuu@example.org would be a better default, since ​http://example.org/ is built for that. Otherwise if someone later installs one of those 'spam email my commenters' plugins, they won't get bouncebacks.

Also poor form to use a potentially real email address as the default - I was assuming that .example would never be allowed as a real tld.. :)

[netweb]

Replying to dd32:

Also poor form to use a potentially real email address as the default - I was assuming that .example would never be allowed as a real tld.. :)

Per ​RFC 2608, Section 2, .test, .example, .invalid and .localhost are the only TLDs guaranteed to never be allocated.

[Ipstenu]

.example might be the best then, since it SHOULD be obvious "Don't email this one!" but ... well. As much as I'd love to have an email and a gravatar, it may be wiser to leave that out for now.

[ocean90]

Related: #34116

[ocean90]

While we're on it, can we remove the entity to solve #14268?

[rachelbaker]

Use wapuu@… as the default commenter email and revise the default comment wording to remove the entity.

[rachelbaker]

In 36702.6.diff​ I changed the first commenter email address to be wapuu@wordpress.example as suggested by @dd32 (and others).

I also made an attempt to resolve #14268 by changing the default comment content to:

Hi, this is a comment.
To moderate comments, just log in. There you will have the option to edit or delete them.
Commenter avatars come from <a href="​https://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a>.

Versus the previous nonsensical text:

Hi, this is a comment.
To delete a comment, just log in and view the post&#039;s comments. There you will have the option to edit or delete them.

I am not attached to my edit here, and happy to defer to alternatives.

[ocean90]

In 37888:

Comments: Improve author and content of the default comment.

The new comment:

A WordPress Commenter <wapuu@wordpress.example>:

Hi, this is a comment.
To moderate comments, just log in. There you will have the option to edit or delete them.
Commenter avatars come from <a href="https://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a>.

Also introduces a network setting to set the email address of the first comment author on a new site.

Props Ipstenu, rachelbaker, jorbin, jeremyfelt.
Fixes #36702, #14268.

[helen]

Could we please avoid using "just" (and similarly, "simply")? It's important not to trivialize actions that are perfectly reasonable for a user to find tricky (where to go to log in is not exactly intuitive, even with the rewrites we have now). I'm also not sure telling them to log in is really the action so much as heading to the comments screen - if they need to log in, they do it along the way.

Another suggestion:

To get started with moderating, editing, and deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard.
Commenter avatars come from <a href="​https://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a>.

If there is a more standard way we refer to screens in the admin in user-facing documentation, please use that instead.

[jorbin]

In 37921:

Comments: Further improve text of initial comment.

In [37888], the comment text was initially updated, however an opportunity to make the text less trivializing of actions that users will take was missed. To quote Helen Hou-Sandi: "It's important not to trivialize actions that are perfectly reasonable for a user to find tricky (where to go to log in is not exactly intuitive, even with the rewrites we have now)."

The text of the comment now reads:

Hi, this is a comment.
To get started with moderating, editing, and deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard.
Commenter avatars come from <a href="​https://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a>.

Some interesting reading on the topic of "Simple" and "Easy" and how they relate to software development can be found at ​http://andrewspittle.com/2012/01/31/avoiding-easy/ and written by andrewspittle.

Props helen.
Fixes #36702.