[horde] [imp] default reply behavior in dimp/imp

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting D G Teed <donald.teed at gmail.com>:

> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org> wrote:
>
>> And totally agree with Jan: to those who think a user can't figure out a
>> drop-down arrow element provides additional options related to the top-level
>> element, a very common element in a variety of UIs, then you obviously
>> regard your users a bunch of complete idiots.  This seems entirely
>> unrealistic.
>
> The button used for the drop down selector is unrealistically small.
> I didn't notice it until much later in the testing of horde.

Point taken.  I myself agree that our button graphics/design could be  
better.  Those with more graphic design experience are encourage to  
provide suggestions for improvements.

But neither I nor any of the other devs agree with the argument that a  
drop-down UI menu is too much of a functional roadblock for an average  
use to figure out.

> I don't regard users as idiots.  But I do know they reply very quickly to
> email at times.  When they do this and they are tired (were you a student
> in University before?), or in a rush, or emotional, or focused on something
> else at the moment, a terrible mistake of Reply to All can occur, and
> potentially
> ruin their life.  I've seen a department head with a Ph. D. use Reply to All
> in error (not sure what email client it was).  So it doesn't link to
> intelligence.

As mentioned previously, this argument is a loser.  I could flip your  
hypothetical around into the following: a student sends a message out  
to his group telling the members of the group to share data from an  
experiment so that they can complete an assignment.  Each group member  
has different data.  If each group member replies only to the sender  
(because it it the default option), this completely defeats the point  
of the original message.

Or a department head sends out a message asking for availability for a  
meeting.  A message sent to the entire recipient list will likely  
provoke compromise and discussion with quick resolution of a time that  
works for everyone.  A bunch of individual messages sent to the  
original sender will require that individual to process the results,  
and most likely send out another message inquiring

At some point a user has to take responsibility for what they send.   
You can't make wild assumptions about what a user *might* be thinking  
and default always to a lossy method of replying.  Instead, the more  
correct behavior is to always default to a lossless method of  
replying, and then CLEARLY indicate to the user the other alternative.  
  If a user complete ignores this CLEAR indication, there is no one to  
blame but themeselves.  You can't break desired functionality based on  
a user's doomsday scenario.

Whether we are CLEARLY indicating to a user the alternatives is a  
graphic design decision and, as mentioned multiple times, is open to  
discussion.  Maybe when replying to all we want to delineate the To/Cc  
fields more clearly (different background color? colored border?)

> Assuming users are always wide awake, completely read everything on  
> the screen
> in front of them, etc., place full attention on the user interface, is
> just unrealistic.
>
> The best safety is to make them engaged in how they intend to reply, not
> starting on any default for all replies.

Jan's suggestion is a good starting point for future discussion:  
possibly providing an option to more clearly indicate to the user what  
the preferred/correct/automatically determined reply behavior will be.  
  But this doesn't escape the conclusion: there is a correct default  
behavior for each type of message, and this default behavior can not  
be globally determined or decided, especially by an admin via a  
configuration option.  And providing *more* options to a user,  
especially when one of the options is incorrect default behavior, is  
also not an option.

This discussion has been very interesting and informative.  But at  
some point a decision needs to be made, and that decision is being  
made now.  Multiple reply buttons are not going to be added, nor will  
there be a configurable option to change the default reply method.   
Further discussion should be centered solely on how to broadcast to a  
user the ability to proactively change their reply method.

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]