650789 - Please add a "confirmation on delete" dialogue for address book entries ("Are you sure you want to delete the selected contact(s)?")!!!

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 526541

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #526541 +++

Please add a "confirm on delete" option for address book entries!!!
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Warning: Reproducing this bug can result in permanent dataloss from your addressbook!!! Create a new addressbook with test entries to test this!
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STR

1a Open the Address Book (Ctrl+Shift+B; first address book entry will automatically be selected) OR
1b View the contacts sidebar when composing a msg
2 Read the dataloss warning above!!!
3 Create a new address book with a number of entries that can be deleted in the next steps
4 Do not try this on a real address book!!!
5a Select a single contact (OR)
5b Select multiple contacts (they will be deleted!)
6 (optionally) scroll selected entries out of view
7a (Address book) Accidentally, hit the DEL key on your keyboard
7b (Contacts side bar) Accidentally, click the Delete Menu when you want the properties menu (very easy to miss! more bugs needed!!!)

Actual Result

5a the selected contact is silently and permanently deleted, without warning
5b all of the selected contacts(!) are silently and permanently deleted, without warning
6 if scrolled out of view before, you do not even see them disappearing!!!
That's dataloss of the worst sort.
And there is no undo, due to bug 94407, which 10 years after filing is still assigned to nobody, so we cannot expect a fix anytime soon.

Expected Result

Warn the user by asking for confirmation before the permanent deletion of address book data!
I.e., show a simple confirmation dialogue like this:

[Delete Contacts]
Are you sure you want to delete the selected contact(s)?
[Delete Contacts] [Cancel]

And do NOT tell us that we should wait for bug 94407 to have an undo instead
- we have waited for 10 years without any progress, and it's far more complex to implement than this one, and we are sick and tired of waiting any longer to protect our addressbook data
- more importantly, bug 94407 does NOT solve the problem of this bug(!), as has been said ever-so-often in the respective comments, and it's still true, as I shall show below.

Reasons:

1) Address book data are valuable data that require best protection
8) The default behaviour should be 100% fool-proof. UNDO is NOT fool-proof, because unless we go for another more complex UI, the average user will not know where to look for undo.
2) UNDO function does NOT help, because:
Most of the time that this accident happens, especially with single entries, the user is likely to not even notice that an address book entry has been deleted. Much more so as if the selected and deleted entries happen to be out of view. If the user notices later, he will have no ideas why, and will falsely blame a bug in Thunderbird that it mysteriously loses addresses.
3) Deletion of important data should ALWAYS come with a warning.
4) Deliberate deletion of individual contacts is a RARE use case for most users, so there is no problem to ask for confirmation. Most people don't usually delete lots of individual entries from their address book.
5) Even for deleting multiple non-adjacent entries in a row, one by one just because you so wish, this just adds ONE single, simple keystroke for each deletion: ENTER. Otherwise, use the method of No. 6!
6) For multiple entries, user can select them (with shift or ctrl), and press DEL ONCE, and confirm with ENTER ONCE. No fuss, no nothing. Where the ... is the problem?
7) If you think this should be configurable, let's have a hidden preference for a start. Do not implement an UI (like "never ask this again" etc.) because that will delay this bug another 5 years.
8) In any case, it's better to have a few people complain about an extra keystroke, than have a lot of people suffer from (potentially unnoticed) permanent dataloss. Iow, avoiding dataloss outweighs a little inconvenience!
9) Needless to say, permanent dataloss without warning is a big problem:
- Even if the user does notice immediately, he may not easily be able
to determine which entry was deleted, in order to add that entry back.
- Even if he knows which entry was deleted, he may not know the e-mail
address or other info that was stored for that entry, or which mailing
lists that entry was on, so he will be unable to reconstruct the data.
10) If the user accidentally pushes the DEL key a little longer (or something falls on the keyboard or whatever, think of accidents!), he might wipe out his whole address book without confirmation. NO, NO, NO! We do need confirmation here!!!

Conclusion:

C1) UNDO is not implemented, and we have no reason to assume it will be any time soon. Furthermore, UNDO doesn't help because accidental deletion, by its nature, might easily happen unnoticed, and is too difficult for the average user. So we need another solution, and we need it NOW!
C2) Not asking for confirmation before deletion of address book data, currently permanent deletion, creates the potential for silent and unnoticed deletion of single or multiple contacts, even the whole address book (very easy with the current wrong design of the context menu in contacts side bar):
This bug is really CRITICAL, and should BLOCK!
C3) A simple confirmation dialogue does not need a lot of coding: After more than 10 years, please FIX THIS to stop the dataloss, and stop debating and daydreaming about complex undo functions that never see the light of day and would not even solve the problem!

N.B. I took some ideas/wording from related/duplicate bugs on this issue.
N.B.2: I am a power user, iow quite aware of focus and the nature of this bug. Yet, while testing for this bug, I ran into the scroll trap and accidentally deleted one address book entry for good, without knowing which one it is! Sorry, but this sucks, especially because so many users throughout the years have asked for the simple confirmation dialogue, just to be ignored!

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Marking as duplicate of bug 526541 as the STR in that bug were misunderstood.