Gutenberg: Revisit the "Write your story" prompt

[earnjam]

I'll pre-empt this by saying this is pretty trivial and could described as bikeshedding. However, since it's the first thing a user sees, I felt like it was at least worthy of a discussion and a documented decision.

When first creating a new post, the prompt in the content area is "Write your story". After entering any content, the prompt in the standard empty paragraph block is "Add text or type / to add content". Why are these different?

Carl noted in his fantastic user story example that this would be a strange prompt for anyone who is just using WordPress as a CMS and not for blogging or writing stories (which is a _huge_ portion of WordPress users).

Looking back through both Slack and git history, I can't seem to find any discussion around the decision for the verbiage of this prompt, or even where this was originally introduced. It looks like it got added in #3623, but I'm not positive that it wasn't in another file before that.

Joen noted here, that our goal is to optimize for both people writing text _and_ people building websites. I understand the point of this verbiage is to "keep it human, engaging", and I know that it is filterable, but it feels like favoring one use case over another here.

While you can make an argument that it's generic enough to work for posts in many/most situations, it doesn't really make sense for pages in the majority of contexts. Maybe for an "About" or "History" type page, but that's 1 out of an entire site.

Is it worth it to make them different by post type? Is it better to keep them consistent, but generalize it more so it's not so writing-specific?

[earnjam]

Also, if there is some other place where this was previously discussed publicly, please link to it here. I couldn't find anything beyond the links I shared above.

[karmatosed]

I wouldn't be against having it adjust to say different things but I do worry about usability there and learning. What do you suggest it should say?

[youknowriad]

@karmatosed Maybe a stupid idea but what if we:

Replace the "Write story" with the placeholder of the empty paragraph: "Add text or type / to add content" and remove the placeholder from paragraphs entirely?

[karmatosed]

@youknowriad not at all a stupid idea, it's unusual but can you maybe do a PR to see what that feels like?

[mtias]

I'd +1 going with Add text or type / to add content in general. Specially if it helps newcomers discover the slash shortcut :)

Another idea was to have a rotating set of tips for this prompt.

In any case, I definitely agree on dropping the "write your story".

[earnjam]

That's a great point about helping newcomers learn about slash commands!

[GlennMartin1]

Rotating messages are confusing. (i.e. _"is this a different kind of block now?"_)

As of 4.1.1, there is both "Add text or type / to add content" and also "Write your story"

I'd vote +1 for keeping it only "Add text or type / to add content" or some variant that helps newcomers learn about the slash.