Please relocate /faq, /feedback, and PPA TOS to the wiki

This is now high as Steve has changed the PPA TOS and it differs between Launchpad and the wiki. The wiki being the current edition.

I found a way to reconcile this so I'm demoting to medium. I'll ask Celso to look at this as removing the ppa tos from inside LP will require a rethink on the nifty click through acceptance of the TOS.

Well, I think we could simply include the link to PPA-TOS in h.l.n instead of rendering its text in "Activate Your PPA" form.

That would be super Celso. I was expecting this for 1.1.10 so there is no rush. Thanks.

The PPA-TOS part is sorted in my `trivialiaties-2` branch. Let me know if it's a acceptable solution.

Celso, yes on trivialities-2 :-) Thanks.

I think it is inappropriate to move the terms of service to the help wiki, for four reasons.

First, terms of service are not "help" in any sense of the word, so for them to appear on a "Launchpad Help" site is misleading.

Second, it would increase the number of page loads to read the terms. Having the button to accept the terms on the same page as the terms is not "nifty", it is standard expected behavior for Web sites, and removing this would make Launchpad less efficient to use.

Third, putting the terms on a wiki at all would alarm more savvy users by making them wonder if anyone could edit the terms. (help.launchpad.net currently makes no visual distinction whatseover between editable and non-editable pages, but even making such a distinction would fix the problem only partly.)

Fourth, in future all those who have accepted the terms should be notified when they change. Moving the terms out of the Launchpad codebase would make this much more difficult to implement.

Matt Revell and I will shortly be drafting a spec on the future of the Launchpad help system. This may involve retaining the wiki, or it may not.

Hi Matthew,

I'll address your items here:

1) I'm not certain I agree (or disagree). However this was agreed to with the Privacy and Data Retention Policy so it's not up for discussion any longer. The ToS would be better suited for a Launchpad wiki but currently that one is private. Having it in a wiki instead of LP allows us to make updates without haivng to make code changes.

2) We are not doing the PPA click through in the same manner so this comment is not valid.

3) The ACL on the wiki is active and select pages are locked down to me and Matt Revell only. I am the only wiki admin. Should someone update those by some nefarious means, Matt will get an email about it and can revert it.

4) Notification of ToS and Policy changes are now being done as discussed in the Privacy and Data Retention Policy: 1) you can subscribe to the wiki entry (which you couldn't do in LP), 2) email will be sent to -users, 3) notification will be posted on the Notification feed on the Blog, and 4) eventually the Front page of LP will suck the Notifications down from blog via cached RSS.

Joey

Earlier, when I questioned how we would handle people who registered with Launchpad before the Privacy and Data Retention Policy was introduced, you explained that the policy was not terms of service and therefore people did not need to agree to it. So I'm confused as to why you're now saying that the PPA ToS should be handled in the same way as the Privacy and Data Retention Policy, when the ToS *are* something that people need to agree to. I'm also unsure what you mean by "We are not doing the PPA click through in the same manner": that looks like it's begging the question, so probably I'm misunderstanding you.

I understand that a wiki page is easier to edit, but I think the disadvantages I've described outweigh that advantage. Each of the disadvantages apply every time someone applies for a PPA, whereas ease of editability applies to only one person every few months (or however rarely we need to update the ToS).

Hi,

Earlier, when I questioned how we would handle people who registered
> with Launchpad before the Privacy and Data Retention Policy was
> introduced, you explained that the policy was not terms of service and
> therefore people did not need to agree to it. So I'm confused as to why
> you're now saying that the PPA ToS should be handled in the same way as
> the Privacy and Data Retention Policy, when the ToS *are* something that
> people need to agree to.

I gather this is from the overt "click here to signal your acceptance"
action. From that perspective, ToS needs to be overt but the policy doesn't
need to be. This happens today and will happen after this change. The PPA
ToS will be still need to be accepted. It simply references the ToS now
rather than a click-through process.

I'm also unsure what you mean by "We are not
> doing the PPA click through in the same manner": that looks like it's
> begging the question, so probably I'm misunderstanding you.

As above, the changes are in Celso's branch. When someone new wants a PPA,
they still have to select "I agree" so we are not bypassing this. The text
has simply moved.

I understand that a wiki page is easier to edit, but I think the
> disadvantages I've described outweigh that advantage. Each of the
> disadvantages apply every time someone applies for a PPA, whereas ease
> of editability applies to only one person every few months (or however
> rarely we need to update the ToS).

I've already processed a two changes to the PPA ToS with yet another one
under way. We have some plans to expand the FAQs and also update the LP
Terms of Use as well. With the above remove of click-through, certain
disadvantages you mention I don't believe apply, unless I'm misunderstanding
you.

Ok, I'll try again. *Right now* in Launchpad (i.e. launchpad.net), the PPA terms of use are on the same page as the button for agreeing to those terms. This is good whenever someone applies for a PPA, because it's perfectly in context, it doesn't require any extra page loads, and people can be confident that the terms are genuine. It's inconvenient whenever someone updates the terms, because they need to do it in the Launchpad codebase instead of on a wiki.

The proposed change is that the PPA terms of use be moved to a wiki page. This would be better whenever someone updates the terms, because doing so in a wiki would be faster than doing it in the Launchpad codebase. It would be worse whenever someone applies for a PPA, because the page would be full of non-sequitur navigation ("Launchpad Help", "Page Info", "Raw Text", "Spelling" etc), because it would require one or two extra page loads (depending on whether they'd opened in a new window or the same window), and because by it being on a wiki at all the applicant would no longer be certain that the page was genuine.

People apply for PPAs much more often than people update the PPA terms, and the latter will likely become even less frequent over time. Therefore, I think the status quo is more usable overall than the proposed change.

Hi,

I completely understand your viewpoint. Strictly speaking, you are correct. It is unfortunately rather impractical for a few reasons:

 * It separates a key legal document from the rest of the Legal material listed on https://help.launchpad.net/Legal
    This in itself prevents me from agreeing with keeping the terms inside launchpad.

 * It's harder to make changes as we need to. We have to wait for cycle roll-outs to deploy updates.

 * You cannot subscribe to the terms in LP but you can subscribe to them (and in fact say that on /Legal) in the wiki

 * Keeping the terms directly in the code is "bad" from a code point of view

I've spoken with Celso today about this and he in favour of moving it out as requested. I've spoken with Kiko today and, while he also acknowledges that you are correct, has no objections to us doing this.

If for some reason in the future we don't like this, it's a trivial change to reinstate this or do something slightly more complicated like an iframe (which breaks out test suite).

Joey

RF 4974

Fixed in mainline 4976