blog: delete confirmations

[Tuxman]

Things like that can lead to them actually believing that 30 years is a long time.  It's not.  It's a heartbeat, a teardrop.  Nothing more.

In the IT world it is translated as "six startups".

Information may be ill-supported, unverifiable, or misleading; Knowledge (epistemologically: logos) is never considered concrete enough (as it's more of a "belief") to have a right and a wrong in the traditional sense.

If you know something wrong, it is.

Anyone can have an opinion.

I guess not everyone should, though.

[dunno]

30 years of experience doesn't necessarily mean a more knowledgeable or professional person, it could mean year one's incorrect techniques and inferior workmanship repeated 29 times, the errors and faulty paradigms haven't been exposed, but it requires experience to expose and rectify this.

In the software UI world every teenage hack has his/her OWN idea of what constitutes usability, a "cool" UI seems to take precedence over functionality, simplicity, and ease of use.

History repeats itself because human nature hasn't changed, and each time history repeats itself the price goes up.

[Kilmatead]

In the software UI world every teenage hack has his/her OWN idea of what constitutes usability, a "cool" UI seems to take precedence over functionality, simplicity, and ease of use.

The problem is it's not actually the teenagers who are designing the UI's, it's companies pandering to them in order to make their software tool hip, trendy, and popular - usually meaning lots of red text on black skinned backgrounds.  Which pretty much explains every high-end mouse driver ever made.

It's a such a pity they wrote laws that forbid us from removing said teenagers from the ecosystem with prejudice.  But, there's always hope (just need a way to translate it into an online thing... )

[nikos]

i thought of a good metaphor: a safety belt is something that bugs you most of the time, until you crash the car, then it starts to make sense

[Kilmatead]

You're in a metaphor of fear.  A new father sees danger around ever corner, under every leaf, in every shard of broken glass left carelessly around the baby's cot.

You aren't the best judge of "reasonable" safety these days.  One day you'll have to let him go to jump off the bridge of life, and that'll be that - until then, try treating your users like the adults we pretend to be and let us slit our wrists with glee if we want to!

[dunno]

The seat belt metaphor, nah.

It's more like, the car manufacturer forcing the driver, to manually check the oil, manually check the tyre pressures, before allowing the user to open the door, then force the user to blow into a bag prior to every engine start.

I have watched people use software, without exception the users didn't pause to reflect and confirm their delete action when presented with the delete confirmation dialog, the confirmation dialog was and is viewed as a nuisance by most everyday users, their rationale being, "I can always find it in the bin", many would like to disable the confirmation dialog but don't know how to disable this delete confirmation dialog, some don't even know that the delete confirmation dialog can be modified.

Just because software developers have adopted certain delete habits which are derived from losing valuable data doesn't mean that joe soap has the same user habits, developers and users are worlds apart in UI requirements.

I have monitored Rockbox's dev channel for years, and the one thing that stands out is that there is seldom consensus among a handful of bright dev's. There are continuous running battles over what is good for the user, interestingly it's the mature founders of the project which return sanity to the project by rejecting through patient discussion to the "young uns" that xyz is not the way forward, it's not worthwhile cluttering up the UI with features for features sake.

[nikos]

let's put it like that, if you lose the files despite the confirmation then I have a very strong argument to tell you that it is your fault and not mine

[Kilmatead]

I have a very strong argument to tell you that it is your fault and not mine

You already have that argument:

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. IN NO EVENT SHALL ZABKAT BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DAMAGES OF ANY KIND INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (WHICH SHALL INCLUDE WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES
FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS OR PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF
BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) WHETHER BASED ON
CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHER LEGAL THEORY, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR
INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ZABKAT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Would that the rest of us could cover our arses so thoroughly in real life.  If the fine print allows for Google and others to avoid taxes, etc, it's good enough to allow you to scoff at potentially idiotic users.

(Which may or may not include my potential future self, and any silly decisions my potential future self may or may not make, whether of sound mind, or influenced by too much caffeine and/or other ingestible substances which act upon the rationale-centres of the brain - my potential future self reserves the right to blame you for every and all afflictions humanity may suffer in perpetuity, or for as long as my potential future self remains logged in for any given session to these servers.  These claims will not be limited to, nor absolved by, Mongol Invasions, Spanish Inquisitions, or random Shark Attacks.)