Improve workflow for getting new portal account

[timconrad]

The process for getting a (new) account is sub-optimal.

We got this email from a user who wanted to get an account - this should be the basis of making the process more user-friendly:

"ich hatte gerade einen aha-Effekt. Meine "Anmeldung" über den offiziellen Portal-Weg hängt seit einer Woche. Ich habe keine Lust die Mail zu suchen an den vermutlich abgeschossenen Base-Dienst, um da zu schimpfen.

Was in einem zweiten Versuch dann aber super geklappt hat: Randomisiertes Rumklicken bis irgendwo DFN stand. Von da war alles klar.

In meiner naiven Sicht: DFN = lokale shibboleths oder sonstwas = im Prinzip dasselbe wie eduroam.

Warum wird dieser Zugangsvektor im Portal nicht präferiert? Warum ist der Link auf die Hilfeseite superduper-generisch und das Gegenteil von hilfreich?"

[dgoeddeke]

I was that user. Here is a bit more Detail:

If I click on "sign in" anywhere, I get this: https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin

Which seems helpful, but if I then click on "Hilfe beim Anmelden", I get some way too generic not even MaRDI-related page. This is one part of the issue.

If I click on "Log in with your NFDI AAI Account", I can start to create one, but after one week of waiting for a verification, I decided to give up. Apparently this base service you use (?) is total crap.

If I click on "Anmelden", it happily tells me that my username is "user16" (no idea where that comes from), my browser suggests various MaRDI passwords such as the one from the groupware/nextcloud, and I deadend.

But, and here things work, if I click "Log in with your NFDI AAI Account" and then on "DFN-AAI", I get into the same thing I need to do when I sign up for, e.g., eduroam from outside my home institution. Plus some digmos nonsense about "Wählen Sie ihren Mandanten", but guessing that I want "MaRDI" here is not too difficult.

I postulate that this works the same way for any university within Germany at least. Maybe other access vectors also work.

I kindly ask to prioritise this issue until GAMM, i.e., beginning of March. Not to solve this problem, but at least to improve the documentation. Otherwise the interactive parts we plan for the GAMM and beyond simply will fail, because people won't be able to join the Portal.

[dgoeddeke]

My temporary suggestion is to boost up the meaning of "Hilfe beim Anmelden": Turn this simple link into something that looks like a button, and replace the generic text with known-to-work trajectories to sign in, such as mine.

The reason I am after this is of course GAMM -- we plan some additions to the portal by participants. Not all of these are possible through staging it seems. More details at the GAMM prep meeting March 3, to which you have been invited.

[physikerwelt]

The UI can be adjusted via https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/wiki/MediaWiki:Loginprompt and the link target is defined via https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/wiki/MediaWiki:Helplogin-url I changed the help text slightly to test if it actually can be changed.

However, we should define a process that people can register and GAMM that can't manage to access via the base service. MaRDI staff can use https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/wiki/Special:CreateAccount to create accounts manually.