slightly OT: preventing user stupidity

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 11:35:59AM -0600, Lerebours, Jose wrote:
> My experience has been the least key-stroke the better.  So, having
> them type more than a single key stroke will be suicide.

This is a favorite topic from the RISKS digest.

What *appears* the easiest may not always be the best.  My favorite
example of this is the door handles at pre-schools.  They're often
installed 5 feet above the floor, rather than in the traditional, more
"convenient" position.

And, of course, this is on purpose: the job of those handles is not to
make it easy for adults to get in and out, it's to make it *difficult*
for small children to do it unnoticed.

Note that they don't just *lock* the doors: if there *was* a fire, for
example, the kids could just haul a chair over to the door and get out.
But that's loud and noticeable enough that it won't happen in normal
attended service, so the relocated handle serves it's purpose.

So, the real question you have to ask yourself is: "What am I trying to
optimize *for*?"

Clearly, if they can easily choose the wrong answer to "should I post
now?", then fewer keystrokes really are *not* "better".  And having to 
type many keystrokes would actually *prevent* suicide, where suicide is
here defined as "having to pay the consultant $LARGE_AMOUNT to come fix
your screwup; you're fired!"

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
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      If you can read this... thank a system adminstrator.  Or two.  --me