-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 20/09/2015 17:42, Phil Stracchino wrote: > 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? > Yes and no. I absolutely agree that there is no point in trying to please those who don't want to know. There's no point in any further discussion on that. There is, however, a large body of users, mainly invisible, that are vaguely aware of the need for security, but frankly easily scared off. Too much information, as David was trying to point out (and others have echoed at various points in this discussion) is just to "scarey" and those that would have like to use Enigmail would run away.
It's a sad fact that a huge proportion of computer users are woefully ignorant of security - we'd not be plagued by so many viruses, trojans, keystroke-recorders and the like if this were not so. Don't be put off, either, by the grandma and grandpa image - just for the record, I'm 75 and a great-grandma. That's by the way, though. I was once asked to do a "using the internet safely" talk to a group of women, almost all retired or soon to be retired people from responsible jobs who had used computers in their work for years. It was a shock to all of us, me as the leader of the group, and them as the listeners. They were stunned by the number of things I pointed out to them (with screenshots showing where to look) of which they had been completely unaware. (Not unlike my missing the hint that a message was going out unsigned and unencrypted, until it was decided to colour it red! Thanks for that!) Educating this group is probably something that has to be done by responsible family members and friends. It's not the responsibility of the Enigmail team. What we really need from the team is a simplistic view of what is happening as the default, with clear ways to invoke the more complex needs of advanced users. That's why I like Robert's "Privacy, Authenticity, Identity" with colour to indicate state. I think it would be a great help to less confident users. Off my soapbox now :-) Anne -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlX+9WwACgkQj93fyh4cnBfk3QCfZTtRVGRwTG5A8JwewyhcDn6N r64AnAvx0rr0Wys0jP9XQDup4jGyYERN =GIjC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ enigmail-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or make changes to your subscription click here: https://admin.hostpoint.ch/mailman/listinfo/enigmail-users_enigmail.net
