Re: [PATCH] When deleting in bookmark menu, prompt for confirmation.

[Karl Fogel]

On 06 May 2021, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> It's not the same -- giving them the ability to recover is 
> better.  :-)
> We're teaching users to hit "y" after a whole bunch of commands, 
> and the
> "y" becomes automatic.

Ah, that's not a problem here.

When a confirmation prompt is used to defend against 
*accidentally* performing an action that the user didn't intend to 
perform, then there is no habituation problem.

In other words, sure, the "yes" *should* be automatic: if what you 
intend to do is execute the deletion of marked bookmarks, then you 
will (habitually and unthinkingly) type 'x yes RET'.  No problem 
there.

But when you *didn't* intend to do that, and you had simply hit 
'x' by accident, then you're very unlikely to type 'yes RET' as 
the very next thing you do -- your brain isn't running that macro 
right now.  So you'll be surprised when you find yourself at a 
confirmation prompt, and you'll look at what's happening and type 
C-g or 'no' to back out of the situation.  The confirmation has 
served its purpose.

The "confirmation is bad because habituation" argument is classic, 
but it only applies to situations where the confirmation was 
intended to make someone think more carefully about an intended 
action -- that is indeed foolish, but it's not what we're doing 
here.  Confirmation whose purpose is merely to make sure that 
action was intended at all is not broken by habituation, but 
rather made stronger by habituation.

Best regards,
-Karl