Site-wide, replace "users" in favor of a more specific description of the group of people

[ghost]

Backstory

It wasn't until the other day that I began to question my persistent use of the word "users" in some of mine and others' writing. Reading through the style guide for contributing to GitHub's Explore is when I first noticed this word choice being avoided. The style guide states:

Avoid using "users" in favor of developers, people, or a more specific description of the group of people.

This made a lot of sense to me — I wondered why I hadn't thought of this semantic behavior before. And then today, in my Twitter feed, I saw this thread, and subsequently this blog post and this talk.

The way I see it, using words other than "user" adds more of a human-focus to whatever is being said. Sure, avoiding the term "users" can seem quite pedantic, but given it's such a simple thing to change I don't see the harm.

Relevance to Privacy Guides

Privacy Guides isn't selling a product or participating in public relations with customers, but I think the site should still strive to have an inclusive and enunciated voice. I think using more specific, human-focused terms instead of "users" would help with that.

It is an incredibly small detail, no doubt. But, focusing on small details is my specialty 😛

[jonaharagon]

But, focusing on small details is my specialty

This is why I like you 😜

This might be a good idea. I'm unsure how to rephrase sentences like "Windows users can turn on DoH by..." though. Some possibilities:

• People who use Windows can turn on DoH by...
• One can enable DoH on Windows by...
• On Windows, you can turn on DoH by... <- Then we would need to determine the formality of the site's writing, whether we should stick with third-person or use words like "you", possibly an issue to be solved in #908.

[jonaharagon]

Worth noting we use you/your extremely frequently already apparently, so we could just standardize that more often.

[ghost]

Yeah, the writing style guidelines is the broader idea here. I should've brought this up there instead. I'll mark this as solve and just link to it over there 👍

[ghost]

#908