Simon Willison’s Weblog

2nd August 2025 - Link Blog

Re-label the "Save" button to be "Publish", to better indicate to users the outcomes of their action (via) Fascinating Wikipedia usability improvement issue from 2016:

From feedback we get repeatedly as a development team from interviews, user testing and other solicited and unsolicited avenues, and by inspection from the number of edits by newbies not quite aware of the impact of their edits in terms of immediate broadcast and irrevocability, that new users don't necessarily understand what "Save" on the edit page means. [...]

Even though "user-generated content" sites are a lot more common today than they were when Wikipedia was founded, it is still unusual for most people that their actions will result in immediate, and effectively irrevocable, publication.

A great illustration of the usability impact of micro-copy, even more important when operating at Wikipedia scale.