On 09/20/15 07:05, Anne Wilson wrote: > On 20/09/2015 03:17, Phil Stracchino wrote: >> On 09/19/15 21:16, David wrote: >>>> On 9/19/2015 7:31 PM, Robert J. Hansen wrote: >>>>>> With respect to your grandma-and-grandpa comment: we are >>>>>> not interested in aiming Enigmail at people who do not care >>>>>> about email privacy and have no interest in it. Why would >>>>>> we? We're not medieval priests preaching the Gospel to the >>>>>> heathens, infidels, unchurched and unconverted. >>>> >>>> >>>> I see. So instead of a utility that is simple enough for >>>> potentially everyone to use for private emails you are looking >>>> for a 'just for us really paranoid really smart geeks' >>>> application. >> Did you really misunderstand the previous statement that badly, or >> are you deliberately trolling (again)? > > Why is it that whenever someone puts a point of view that is > definitively user-level he is accused of trolling? Robert's reply was > insulting in the extreme. Like David, I wonder why I try to help by > explaining the non-geek viewpoint.
Anne, It's not a question of geek vs. non-geek viewpoint. If the "non-geek" viewpoint didn't matter, we wouldn't be having this whole terminology and user interface discussion right now. That's the whole point of the discussion: to try to devise ways to make Enigmail and its use clearer and simpler to the non-technically-inclined. That said, it's necessary to keep in mind what Enigmail's target audience is, and that is people who want a simple, usable tool to encrypt or authenticate their email. But a crucial part of that is the word *want*. No matter what we do to improve or clarify Enigmail's interface, we're never going to get people to use it who don't *want* to encrypt or authenticate their email in the first place. I may be able to build the world's finest and simplest-to-use artificially-intelligent six-axis CNC milling machine, capable of making things you never even knew you wanted made, but I'm never going to sell you one if you *don't want* a milling machine. And so it is with Enigmail. To try to aim Enigmail at meeting the wants and needs of people who have no interest in email cryptography and don't want to be bothered with it is an effort that is doomed to fail. We can never make Enigmail meet what they want from it, because what they want from it is *not to have to use it*. If we do not start out by recognizing that fact, then we are doomed to fail, because we are aiming at the wrong target. You have declared yourself to be non-technical, a "non-geek". But you are here. You're participating in the discussion. You're trying to present your viewpoint. And your viewpoint is exactly what we want, because *you are the target audience*. Because you *want* what Enigmail can do for you, done for you. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here. But our hypothetical grandma and grandpa who have no interest in any of this new-fangled encryption stuff are not part of the target audience. *Not* because they are non-technical. *Not* because Enigmail does not do simply enough the things that it can do for them. But because *they don't want those things done* in the first place. No matter how hard you work at it, you cannot build the perfect lawnmower for somebody whose principal desire about lawnmowers is to *not own a lawnmower*. Because the only perfect lawnmower for somebody who wants to not own a lawnmower, is no lawnmower. Does this help clarify Robert's point? -- Phil Stracchino Babylon Communications [email protected] [email protected] Landline: 603.293.8485
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