On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 7:53 AM, Jon Robson jrobson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Have we got a copy text writer in the team/community or any copy text guidelines?
CC'ing Jay (our head of communications) as he has the best brains for this ... mmm ... brains
Currently on the mobile site in beta mode [1] we have the text 'Type your search here...' on the search box before you click on it. This created (IMO) an interesting discussion [2].
Glad to see that my suggestion of "Tap to search" made it onto there :D
Personally I think we have a chance to be more inspiring with the words we use. It would be good to think more about this sort of thing across mobile to strengthen the MediaWiki/Wikipedia brand.
Do it. Get community members involved BUT keep in mind this *has* to get translated and a long text string in english will be exceptionally long in other languages. Thus keep it short. Also, were on mobile devices here ... anything moderately long even if a word or two longer is bad. Thus .. keep it short x2. Make those expectations clear if your going to involve more people.
Little things like copy text can make all the difference. 'I'm feeling lucky' on Google for instance rather than 'Go to the top search result' is fun and meaningful. Likewise we could imagine our 'Random' button in the main menu saying 'Inspire me' or 'Surprise me'. Facebook 'What's on your mind?' in the update status box is much more interesting than 'type your status here'.
+1
--tomasz