Account creation user experience/Engineering


 * This page is for engineering issues of productizing (moving into MediaWiki core and enabling on multiple wikis) the experiment to improve Account creation. See /Experiment for details of the Experimental change to Account creation implemented on English Wikipedia in Extension:E3Experiments.

The general approach is to add new versions of the "Log in" and "Create account" forms, with reduced clutter and Agora styling. Users can try these forms by adding  to the query string in the browser URL. The new forms can run alongside the current form until each wiki elects to change over, and eventually the old versions will be retired. The current form is completely unchanged, with the following exceptions:
 * 'userlogin-resetlink' text is changed in old and new forms.

Form changes

 * The login form invites users to join the project with 'userlogin joinproject'.
 * The create account form does not link to Log in, as this is in the top right corner of every page.
 * The create account form has a benefits section (not shown in narrow screens) extolling the benefits of creating an account.

Reduced clutter
The new forms don't show the loginstart, loginend, loginend-https, signupstart, signupend messages.

enwiki crams a massive amount of text in fancycaptcha-createaccount message. The new form hides this in JavaScript. Each wiki should reduce or eliminate this message.

Instead:
 * Login provides a "Help with logging in" link ('helplogin-url')
 * Create account provides a "Help me choose" username policy link ('usercreate-helpusername-url')next to Username.

Other message changes
The new forms position labels vertically, and hence they use a new set of messages for labels that do not end in ':'.

'userlogin-helplink' provides a centered "Help with logging in"