Repeating this here from the Style Guide for completion:

A button toggles something in current user's context. If an action is to “navigate the user to a new resource, taking them away from current context”[1], consider a link instead.

This should guide the design choice depending on functionality behind the interaction element.

@RHo several months have passed. What do we want to do about this ticket?

In T275783#7989422, @Jdlrobson wrote:

@RHo several months have passed. What do we want to do about this ticket?

Apologies this slipped through the cracks! Adding @KStoller-WMF to decide on whether we want to investigate this further, or close.
IMO the quiet "Create Account" button works well in terms of increasing prominence of this call to action due to the larger size and font-weight, combined with the removal of links around it in the new design, so would not expect it to have reduced discoverability and account creation. Not sure if it's worth checking though to see if new account creations were impacted by this change on a few of the wikis this was launched to though, just in case?

In T275783#7138679, @Volker_E wrote:

Repeating this here from the Style Guide for completion:

A button toggles something in current user's context. If an action is to “navigate the user to a new resource, taking them away from current context”[1], consider a link instead.

This should guide the design choice depending on functionality behind the interaction element.

Thanks for highlighting this consideration @Volker_E, buttons vs links can be a bit tricky to navigate! While I agree with this guideline generally, in this particular case I think the user expectation is in keeping with the action of opening up a new account by taking them to fill in a registration form.

@RHo @Volker_E I believe it is my fault for causing the confusion here around button vs. link. When we updated the user tools area in the site header for Vector 2022 both "Create account" and "UsernameX" were changed from links to buttons. A month or two ago when I was looking more closely into how we're styling quiet buttons I realized, as @Volker_E mentioned above, that both "Create account" and "UsernameX" are actually links rather than buttons (though, as @RHo mentions, the lines are blurry in the case of "Create account"). Ultimately I think what would be most appropriate here is:

logged out	logged in

as a sort of aside: this is, in part, why I've proposed that we style quiet-buttons similarly to links, because there are some situations where an element could be equally considered a link as it is a button. If we move forward with that proposal then the styling of "Create account" and "UsernameX" would be the same in either case : )

notes from discussion with @RHo:

1. If the site header remains as-is, there is no concern with changing the implementation of the Create account element and the Username element from quiet buttons (black, bold), to links (blue, non-bold).

2. If the web team decides to move forward with adding additional links to the right corner of the interface for logged-out people (see screenshot below), the web team will A/B test clicks to the Create account element, and revisit this discussion with the resulting data.