The problem they asked me about: they are asked to sign something but are not allowed to read in advance. This can be very deterring, and of course people think twice before signing something whose content they do not know.
Since I didn’t need it for many years, I checked out where our FPCA is, and found it in the Docs, but of course our Docs are not well known for being always up to date, and in any case: there is no link or guarantee to the user that what they find on Google or in the Docs is actually the document they are signing. This is of course less about legal but what impression and potential deterrence this causes to potential contributors.
That said, once clicking on “sign”, the agreement shows up: now the user knows what they sign. Problem? People tend to avoid clicking buttons with the name “Sign” before they know what they are signing → it is not clear that they are shown the text in the next step. Therefore, it might be useful to give them the text before clicking the “Sign” button.
As people are used to the need to accept the terms & conditions of a service, I am not sure if it is 100% intuitive to everybody that this step can be skipped, may there be a “skip” button or not, and in any case, this likely causes some uncertainty to users.
Maybe it makes sense to add a link or button to allow the users to explicitly get the agreement before clicking a “Sign” button or so?
Just some feedback from someone who just made the experience
Also ok, though I tend to avoid the term “sign” at all before something can be reviewed, just to avoid every deterring effect of such trigger words as long as the content is not clear. If the content is not yet clear, I am not sure if I would pair “agreement” and “sign” But of course that would be already an improvement compared to “sign”
Maybe “Acknowledge” or “Confirm” you have read the agreement might be a bit friendlier
Put it at the end of the agreement page and notify the user that it is “Required”
It definitely needs further review as I didn’t work with such a type of implementation before, but hopefully it safes some time and mitigates the issue sufficiently
I am glad we found a hotfix solution here. Seeing this topic reminds me of the epicly-old Council ticket and general agreement we had on abolishing the FPCA and replacing it with a policy. But we still don’t have the replacement policy text for the FPCA, so… life continues on.
PR: 