Hi Francisco, On Tuesday 24 March 2015 16:09:38 Francisco Carriedo Scher wrote: > Taking into account the non-technical users I had in mind for the feature > that originated this thread: > > - [...] *having to use a hierarchy you are not familiar with *[...]. > IMHO non technical users are just half-familiar with file system > hierarchies, despite being those around for decades now... My impression > is that they have "read only" access... a user having a "read only" access? Sorry, but such a case is not relevant here, since we are discussing how to structure files _when_ _saving_ _them_.
> I mean, lots of non-technical users > are usually capable of [erratic] moving along a folder structure they are > given, but not proficient at all when it comes to create/structure it. I got the impression it makes sense to keep two things apart here: 1. complete computer illiterates and 2. "normal", non-tech users The second group is usually very well able to create and understand a simple file hierarchy. Might not always appear logical to "tech-users", but that is not the point here. I have not seen people so far who started to use computers and were really _unable_ to get that far. As said: this is different for illiterates, so people who never used a computer before. But how is that relevant here? We are talking about a system who's sole purpose it is to share information between locations and people. This certainly is not the first thing such an illiterate user starts with. > - The first part of the second point ([...] *spill all files just in > there in a big mess* [...]) I think the situation you depicted is > exactly what happens with the media I am proposing to automatically > organize on the fly. No, you got the statement wrong. I mentioned that as a description of a behavior no one really shows. No nothing that has to be considered, no issue that has to be solved. > But about the second one (systems text search, > searching facilities...), most non-technical users don't even know they > exist (yet many of them are really powerful, find, grep or Windows file > search in the graphical interface). True, although I was not talking about stuff like cli utilities. I was talking about a "desktop search". That is a tool specific for "non-tech" users, in your terms. Though I agree that few users use it. Because it sucks. Again: you got my statement wrong. You cannot draw conclusions from a false statement. Well you can, but they make no sense. > The only attemp I have seen so far > about indexing / search personal contents is preppending alphabet letters > to file / folder names... Pretty ugly and ineffective even for > non-technical users. Actually I know a big company that does exactly that (two digit numbers instead of letters, but that is the same) and they are very successful with it. It is a very simple but extremely powerful strategy. But it also brings all the disadvantages I mentioned at other times. One dimensional, primitive, inflexible. > It just so happens that for a number of people (non-technical and technical > users too) and for certain contents that are pretty common nowadays, time > based hierarchies are meaningful and automatically creating them looks > feasible, so the non-technical won't need the "write access" they are still > lacking (IMHO) and tech users will just have the option to offload the > effort of their discipline in the platform and get things tidy in an > intuitive way "for free". Sorry. I understand what you say. I agree it is a clean structure. But I absolutely do not understand why such a time based structure should make any sense. Why the hell should a "normal" user be interested in when he uploaded say a rock song? That is totally irrelevant for 99% of all cases when you want to access it. What is the purpose of a rock song? You want to listen to it. What do you need to do for that? You have to find it first. Do you look by date of upload when looking for a rock song in your collection? Come on! > What are the views on this? I do think we have similar ideas and requests. But, sorry, I can't follow all of the thoughts you offer. Hierarchies are a valuable means of organization. I stated that more than once. We agree on this. But insisting on one single hierarchy structure as "the right thing" is, sorry again, naive. A hierarchy as you suggest it, that time based structure, might make sense for people using cloud storage as a pure means of backup. And then backup in a very technical way, not the usual "I want to have a copy of all those documents here somewhere". Apart from that I can imagine only very few situations where such a structure might not annoy users, actually. Sorry for those objections! I am certainly not trying to be destructive, in contrary. I just fail to see the advantage of your points. So help me with that! Where did I get you wrong? What did I miss understand? Christian Reiner (arkascha) _______________________________________________ User mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.owncloud.org/mailman/listinfo/user
