Hi, I’m not sure if this is posted in the right category. I was looking for a place to file a proper bug, but couldn’t find it on GitLab so now I’m just putting it here. Feel free to move it.
Anyway, when signing up for an account on ecloud.global you get rent a confirmation email that is riddled with bad spelling and poor English, which can make some users fear that this is a scam (as scammer emails are known for poor English). As such, I’d recommend changing the following parts. Feel free to disagree. I’ve labeled some as just minor suggestions for re-phrasing that I think would work better and others as major language issues for phrasings that are straight-up wrong, or that triggered my ‘scammer alert’.
Also, I had to remove all links since as a new forum user I’m not allowed to include links in my posts.
| Priority | Current | Suggestion | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minor | You have applied for a free account, it is now ready | Your free account is now ready | Uncommon grammar in original phrasing |
| Minor | it can be used for all /e/ services, including email, multimedia content syncing on drive, calendar, … | With it, you can access a number of /e/ services, including email, contact and calendar synchronization, photo backup and more | I have no idea what ‘multimedia content syncing on drive’ means, I’m guessing ‘backing up your photos to the cloud’ |
| Minor | Now, please activate your /e/ account using the following link: | Please activate your /e/ account using the following link: | The “Now” is rarely used for written English in a case like this |
| Major | you can already use the email service | you can use the email service | The ‘already’ makes no sense in this context |
| Minor | you can also login at https://ecloud.global | you can login at https://ecloud.global | The ‘also’ is unnecessary in a bullet point section like this |
| Major | you can use this account to log into the ROM account manager, either during first installation or in Settings->Accounts->… | you can sign in to this account in /e/OS during installation or by going to Settings->Accounts | “ROM account manager” sounds like it’s a way of managing ROM accounts, not a way of managing accounts on the ROM. Also, the average user won’t even know what a ROM is. |
| Minor | PLEASE KEEP IN MIND that /e/ Free drive and mail accounts are supported by donations! | The free /e/ services are supported by donations! | You immediately use the word ‘Please’ again in the next sentence, and the YELLING CAPS LOCK are unnecessary (and frankly unprofessional) as the customer will read the part regardless, and the next sentence - “Please support us now and receive a gift!” - perfectly gets the point across |
| Minor | Report your experience! | We want to hear your feedback! | Minor rephrasing to sound less commanding |
| Major | We think that /e/ will become the 3rd main mobile OS in the future. You can get part of history! We are probably living the most exciting part of the adventure with its inception: few of us together - developers & users - shaping a revolution. | We hope to make /e/ the next big mobile OS, but we need your help! We are still in the exciting early stages of the project where developers and users shape the revolution together. | The current phrasing sounds self-confident and almost delusional (it’s waaaaaaaaay too early to think that /e/ will become the next big thing - but not too early to hope that it will). I’ve rephrased it to sound a bit more humble while hopefully retaining the spirit of the original text. |
| Major | Talk about you and your experience: make a simple post with on twitter, mastodon and other social medias | Let us know about your experience: You can reach us on Twitter, Mastodon and other social media | ‘with’ should not be there. Names should be capitalized, and it is ‘social media’ even in plural |
| Major | You can also open an account at Medium to talk write a small article with illustrations. Post some videos on peertube (or even youtube…)… | You can also create an article describing your experience on Medium, post videos on PeerTube (or even YouTube), etc. | Some language weirdness fixed |
| Major | And we will relay! | We will highlight the best stories! | This is one of the bad ones - ‘We will relay’ is almost completely nonsensical in this context, and it’s very obvious it wasn’t written by a native English speaker |
| Minor | We love to hear from your positive experience, and we will relay all the best stories about /e/ to social medias, in our newsletters… | We love to hear about your experiences, and will highlight the best stories about /e/ in our social media posts, newsletters, etc. | Fixed minor errors and got rid of the odd use of ‘relay’, also got rid of “…” which isn’t really appropriate here. Finally, removed ‘positive’ as it sounded like you don’t want to hear any negative feedback. |
| Minor | Whats next? | What’s next? | Typo |
| Minor | Join our community forums at - register with your brand new @e.email address! | Join our community forums at - you can even register with your brand new @e.email address! | Made it clear that it is not a requirement to register with the @e.email address |
| Minor | Many thanks again for your support! | Once again, thank you for your support! | Minor rephrasing |
I know some will think of it as overly nitpicky to criticize language like this, but IMHO it’s all about optics: /e/ is still in beta and largely unknown, but rapidly getting attention. If the official communications from the /e/ team sound unprofessional or ‘weird’ due to them not being native English speakers, some people will be more likely to get suspicious right off the bat. So rephrasing official communications to sound more naturally English will hopefully avoid that.
Anyway, once again: I would have reported this as a suggestion to the issue tracker if I knew where that was. I hope it reaches the right people here anyway 