Make it easier for people not involved in W3C to join Community Group

[dontcallmedom]

[mgifford]

How do we make it easier for folks to join the W3C's community group. I just encouraged someone to join and got a response back, "i am already confused trying to join the community group I'm afraid"

The process shouldn't be a barrier that stops anyone from joining, especially digitally savvy people.

I think the usability problem is where to start….  If you just want to be a member of a community group, where should you start? Right now. You go to a community group. Click on “Join or leave this group” and then:

“Then it asks me to login with my w3c password and username - but i don’t have a w3c username and there’s no way to register to have one.”

There’s no “Getting started” section here either:
  https://www.w3.org/community/

I can’t remember how I got started with joining a W3C Community group. Seems like it was a while ago. I was both wanting to post this as it seems to be a bit of a recruitment problem. But also, I want some clear instructions for this person to get started.

Ultimately, from everywhere that there is a link to the Join or login page, there should be a "Click here if you aren't already a member" link to https://www.w3.org/account/request/

[dontcallmedom]

Reporting from slack thread:

If you do it on mobile (at least 1,5 years ago) it was pure horror, as a lot of layouts were badly broken. This is especially bad for cognitive accessibility group as users with cognitive disabilities who are encouraged to join may easily find it overwhelming.

[ianbjacobs]

Hi all,

We have a "how to join a group" FAQ entry:
https://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#how-do-i-join-a-group

Feedback welcome!

I will also take steps to surface it in the UX in various places. Thank you for all feedback.

[ianbjacobs]

Hi all,

Based on this issue we've made several changes to the CG site to make it easier to get an account and join a group:

• The Quick Links section of the FAQ now includes a link How to join a group (to the existing FAQ entry).
• The CG home page now includes a section on the right side "Get a W3C Account" to make clearer that this is necessary, and with links to useful pages.
• When you are not logged into the CG site and you push a "Join this group" button, the username/password UX has been changed to now say "Get a W3C account or recover a username/password." with an improved link.

I hope this improves usability and welcome additional suggestions.

Ian

[gosko]

Thanks @ianbjacobs for making these changes.

Regarding:

If you do it on mobile (at least 1,5 years ago) it was pure horror, as a lot of layouts were badly broken. This is especially bad for cognitive accessibility group as users with cognitive disabilities who are encouraged to join may easily find it overwhelming.

I believe this issue should be resolved by a change made in July last year, removing the modal popup window for user logins.