1897662 - add user-preference to disable superfluous warning pop-ups when deleting an empty folder

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[chrizilla]

(Part of meta-bug 1897679 "reduce inconsistencies between deletion warnings for messages and folders".)

enhancement idea 💡

I suggest to give the user the choice to disable the warning-popups for the deletion of empty folders.

rationale

• ux-interruption

  « User experience principle: interfaces should not interrupt the user. Interfaces should never ask the user a question that they are not prepared to answer simply for a false sense of ux-control. In general software should only speak when spoken to. »

• Many users in the related bugs reported or commented that they don't understand the need for this warning when no messages are deleted. For them, the warning confirmation is an unnecessary interruption and unwanted distraction. Example:
  • Johannes Linke in bug 729771 comment #0:

  "the only information an empty folder has is its name, and that is not worth a confirmation dialog."

• When users receive too many warning messages, they tend to ignore them (because the brain doesn't have enough capacity to constantly deal with warnings). Therefore warnings should be reserved for truly dangerous/harmful situations, otherwise they won't get paid attention to. Case in point here: When users are always bugged with warnings about deleting empty folders, users won't pay attention the one time they actually delete a non-empty folder! Therefore the warning messages about empty folders want to be helpful but end up being harmful. It is crying wolf:

  « To raise a false alarm; to constantly warn others about an imagined threat, thereby failing to get assistance when a real threat appears. »

real-life use cases

• Aleksey Nogin says in bug 181429:

  « If a user took time to move out all the messages and subfolders before deleting the folder, then still printing the warning might give user an impression that [s]he still forgot to move out some of the data that was there. Being quite an experienced user, my first reaction to the warning is "wait, is it trying to say I am deleting something different (wrong folder?) than what I though I was deleting?" It would be nice if this warning would only pop up on non-empty folders. »

• My own use case: I never delete non-empty folders in computer programs. Instead I open the folder, have a look what's inside and select all files/messages for deletion myself (active choice), so as to verify that I really don't need any of the files/messages. In a subsequent step I delete the now empty folder. My file manager does not warn me before deleting empty folders, but it warns me before deleting non-empty folders. This way I can be sure to never accidentally delete non-empty folders. I would like Thunderbird to allow me to do the same. If I get warnings about empty and non-empty folders alike, I am unable to pay attention all the time and chances are that I won't notice the warning the one time I accidentally delete a non-empty folder. That's why I always instruct my programs to not warn me about empty folders, if possible.

implementation

2 possibilities:

1. The enhancement could be implemented as a preference mail.warn_on_delete_empty_folder.
   For the reasons cited above, I would suggest to set the pref to false by default.
   But in order to preserve TB's current behaviour, it could be set to true by default.

2. The warning message could include a [ ] Don't ask me again. checkbox.

exception

TB 115's current behaviour is to warn the user about the deletion of a folder which is the target of a move filter. See screenshot in bug 470666 comment #3 :

Deleting the folder ".............." will disable its associated filter(s).
Are you sure you want to delete the folder ?

This behaviour should be maintained for both empty and non-empty folders (because the user needs to know in both cases).

scope / deduplication

• Several other bugs requested to totally eliminate from TB the warning-popups for emtpy folders: e.g. bug 181429, bug 531357, bug 729771
• This bug differs. It requests to keep this warning but to give the user the choice to optionally disable it as a user-pref.

Comment 1

[Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw]]

(In reply to chrizilla from comment #0)

exception

TB 115's current behaviour is to warn the user about the deletion of a folder which is the target of a move filter. See screenshot in bug 470666 comment #3 :

Deleting the folder ".............." will disable its associated filter(s).
Are you sure you want to delete the folder ?

This behaviour should be maintained for both empty and non-empty folders (because the user needs to know in both cases).

So we need to keep the current behavior in any case, since we have no way of knowing if the folder is used by a server-side filter. That's the main reason bug 729771 is WONTFIX.