Feedback Requested: Intro Paragraph for Readme file

Intro paragraph for the Readme file that ships with CP Install. Screenshot here: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/650066/50093208-f6ca7200-0207-11e9-91dc-7842cef9a37a.png

Welcoming feedback & suggestions – thanks!

From the Founding Committee

Welcome to ClassicPress! You’ve just become a part of a growing community of people who value the firm foundation that WordPress 4.9.x provides and believes that, guided by the community via a democratic process, we can leverage our collective expertise to modify and enhance the ClassicPress platform for the betterment of business websites worldwide. Our purpose is to provide a powerful, versatile, and predictable CMS platform tailored to the needs of the business website market. We invite you to connect with us and participate in our thriving ClassicPress community! More details can be found below. (anchor link to “Online Resources” area)

Thank you for being a part of the ClassicPress community!
~ The Founding Committee

3 Likes

I like it.

I think instead of “guided by the community via a democratic process”, we can shorten that to just “guided by the community”.

What about incorporating something like “professional-quality” as opposed to just “business”, or linking this text back to a relevant article? Recent discussion about this: Archetype the target market

4 Likes

I find that first sentence just a little too long and wordy. Can we break it up?.. maybe something like this:

You’ve just become a part of a growing community of people who value the firm foundation that WordPress 4.9.x provides. We believe that, using democratic processes, we can leverage our collective expertise to modify and enhance the ClassicPress platform for the benefit of business websites worldwide.

For some reason I don’t like the word “betterment” but that could just be a personal thing. :slightly_smiling_face:

Also agree with James that you could swap one occurrence of “business” with “professional”.

6 Likes

Excellent points, @james and @ozfiddler – thank you for sharing your thoughts!

1 Like

OK, it’s time to finish this task. I’ve pushed the following text to GitHub:

Welcome to ClassicPress!

You’ve just become part of a growing community of people who value the firm foundation WordPress 4.9.x provides for websites everywhere. Guided by our community, we can leverage our collective expertise to maintain and develop the ClassicPress platform as an excellent choice for business and professional-quality websites worldwide.

Our purpose is to provide a powerful, versatile, and predictable content management system tailored to the needs of the business website market. We invite you to connect with us and participate in our thriving online community.

— The ClassicPress Founding Committee

Since this is a word from the founding committee, let’s put it to a vote.

@Committee: please use the following poll to accept or reject the text above for the ClassicPress readme.html file that will ship with version 1.0.0.

  • Looks good, ship it
  • Needs more work!

0 voters

2 Likes

Just to improve the accessibility I am asking if it is possible to change the thriving term to something more easy.
It is the first time that I see this term and I know that in WordPress they are working to simplify the language also for non-english speaker so I think that we have to do the same.

1 Like

growing? dynamic? developing?

Maybe dynamic is better.

I agree with @Mte90 . Maybe “amazing online community”

None of these really mean the same thing as thriving (fiorente, prosperando). I think this should stay as-is, and it is also the text which we voted on.

4 Likes

We just made a small observation. Don’t expect that everyone has a high level of English of the native speakers.
Growing was also suggested and is a synonym of thriving and it’s easier to understand.

In this context, growing is not the same as thriving.

I also want to be cautious about using words that are painfully overused in the English language. “Amazing” is one of them.

I don’t want to create barriers to those who are not native English speakers, but at the same time I want to convey the right message to those who do understand.

When I get some time I’ll do some research into best practices and work toward that in the future. In the meantime, I think dynamic is a closer match for thriving.

5 Likes

You are right about “Amazing” and Growing isn’t exaclty the most precise word to replace Thriving.
Maybe “Prosperous” because there are more similar words in the other languages, or keep thriving.

1 Like

That would be prospering, not prosperous in this context.

1 Like

In this case “thriving” has no direct synonym; the closest is probably “burgeoning” - hardly an improvement. I think we should keep it as-is.

If we’re going to pick on words we don’t like, let’s take “leverage”. It’s not a verb no matter how much it’s abused as one.

2 Likes

Ahem… yes. That would have to be my least favourite word in there as well (now that “betterment” has been banished :slightly_smiling_face: )


Ahem…

As of right now we have 6 of 11 active committee members voting for the proposed “word from the founding committee”, which is a simple majority. I am calling this task done for now.

If we really want to make further refinements, we can do that at any time before the release of v1.0.0. If you want to do this, please take the initiative to see the changes through, since there are a lot of other things that need our attention before launch:

  • Put the specific changes to a committee vote like we’ve done here, because this is the word from the committee.
  • Submit a PR on GitHub with the changes. With a majority “yes” vote from the committee, I will merge it.
1 Like

I’d like to at least consider an alternative for “leverage” - I’m happy with the rest of it.

2 Likes

Forgive the replying to myself - I was just talking to @BlueSkyPhoenix where I said:

The reason i mention it [use of “leverage”] is because to a non US-English English speaker it leaps off the page as an Americanism

and:

90% of Americanisms are verbiating a noun (and 98.9% of stats are made up on the spot, just like verbiating)

My suggested replacement for “leverage” is the plain, simple, somewhat boring, “use”.

3 Likes

Is this usage of leverage (use of collective efforts), which is a well-worn and well-understood term in business (which is our market), not understood by non-American business people?