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Ask Slashdot: Is the Recycle Bin a Good GUI Metaphor?
dsginter writes "During a recent Windows 7 upgrade, I disabled the 'Recycle Bin' from appearing on the user desktop. Why? Because this allows the users to retrieve errant deletions. While this was the goal of the 'Recycle Bin' in the first place, most people (including myself) are in the good habit of keeping a tidy workspace and 'taking out the trash' when they see that it is full. For some people, their OCD meant that deleting a file was a two step process: delete the file and then empty the recycle bin. By disabling it from view, I have found that the original function is restored for the smattering of times that it is actually needed. Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor?" Going further, is there some combination of metaphor and method of use that you'd find more useful or natural?
I think you are out of line *forcing* other users to abide by your view of how the desktop should operate.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Stop being a pussy.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
I understand that we should always try to improve on the current state of affairs. However, in this case, I think the the "solution" is the answer to a question that no one has asked.
Let the resume' building commence.
You so smart.
No, really.
Here's a pixel for your effort: .
Even if I delete a tiny little file, the trashcan icon goes from completely empty to totally full.
Perhaps the trashcan graphic could show the actual size of the deleted files relative to the space allocated on the hard drive for said files.
That way you would only need consider taking out the trash when the can is actually full.
Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor
Because, I actually want to have an easy way to empty the recycle bin. It's utilization of disk space wasn't a major concern for many year, but now with the introduction of SSDs, and the fact that huge SSDs are not yet affordable, I find myself running out of space on mine quite often. When I do, I tend to find I've got some large files sitting in the recycle bin.
Why is the Windows trash can a folder, yet I can not just browse the contents? In KDE I can just look in the folder and treat it just like any other, and I can purge by date to clean it up. All files are exactly what they were before but with the one additional option to restore it.
How could this possibly be a good idea? And how can you implement this and then accuse every other Windows user of having OCD? Pot. Kettle. Black.
This is an absurd personal preference to force on your users, and a good example of an admin crossing the line from "ensuring the system works well" to "forcing the users to compromise their workflow because of the personal whims of the admin". Admins are supposed to keep users from interfering with the operation of the system, but it's equally important that they don't interfere with what the users are doing more than they absolutely have to.
This is right up there with admins who don't set the time properly / leave the display at a ridiculously low resolution, then lock down the preference setting so it can't be adjusted.
It's only a poor metaphor for the few really anal retentive people who can't be bothered to learn how and why their OS works. But that's not right - the metaphor isn't in error - Trash works just like a trash can. Put stuff in and take it out, empty it when it's full or stinks. What the writer wants is an incinerator.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I thought that was THE metaphor for deleting files, dragging them to the shredder.
Plus, my wife edited a .wav of a chainsaw buzzing followed by a scream and associated it with the action of shredding a file. That added to the effect, you shred a file, hear it get cut up and scream its last. The message it re-inforced was FILE DONE GONE!
I've only just skimmed the summary, but I completely agree, it'd be wonderful to have multiple recycle bins, each a different colour so I can organize my trash. I put red files/icons in the red trash, and green ones in the green etc. I'm pretty sure this helps the OS with housekeeping, because it makes it easier to restore the bits for future files. Sometimes, the colour is not seen before, so I've set up a system to pick the trashcan colour from a colour wheel - this helps organization further.
On top of this scheme, I have various levels of trash: shallow, deep, and megadeep. When I first delete a file, it goes into the shallow trash so that I can restore the file immediately if I've made a mistake. If I'm really sure I don't want a file, or I need more disk space, every so often, I dig into the shallow trash, and move them into the deeper trashcan, and again with the other levels, finally to be deleted at the end of the chain. It's cumbersome, but this way I can make sure I won't delete very important files too easily.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
It doesn't even "waste" any pixels unless you are using the entirety of your desktop to keep files or shortcuts, in which case you much bigger problems than a freakin' icon metaphor.
The problem you describe lies with your need to empty the Recycle Bin.
Leaving it on the Desktop is nice for the times you really *do* want to permanently empty those files as well as the times you want to undelete.
Off topic: Why force your personal preference on the users of your company? I think that's poor form. Let them decide how they want to use their own workspace.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
There, fixed it for you.
The point is that, as stupid as it may be, the owner of the machine SHOULD have omnipotent power over what happens, and is or is not allowed.
IT doesn't "own" the computers any more than the users "own" the computer. The company "owns" the computers.
Challenging IT's computer sovereignty is something only upper management has any business doing. Users who attempt to do so should get sanctioned, and rightly so.
Perfect philosophy if your goal is to get outsourced. Seriously, whenever I have an employee that thinks this way I have to educate them. IT's job is to empower the users to get their job done more efficiently. Period. You serve the users.
Users "own" the applications, in a logical sense. It's their responsibility and their right to be an integral part of the process in determining how it functions. It's a two way street.
There are some things that each side is correct in putting their foot down and drawing a line in the sand - and this one is firmly owned by the users.
Your point number one would have limited benefit for anyone other than a software developer working on code or a website because most of the data in those user cases would be text but then it would be redundant since any competent developer should be using a source repository like SVN in the first place. The average user's data probably has a lot of binary components to it like images, video and sound so recreating an SVN-like versioning would not work very well. Versioning systems like SVN do store incremental changes to text files but anytime you check in a binary file the next revision will be another full binary copy.
I've had experience with versioning systems as a software developer for close to a decade now and they work great for text but not for binary files since there is no sane way of storing the "changes".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It stimulated discussion on an associated topic, security. Look past the surface, mate - secondary considerations are often indicators of something people really want to discuss. And there are a lot of divergent opinions, and in their elaboration, lurkers form their own opinions, some are educated and the purpose of a technical forum is fulfilled.
Why are you even here?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
A metaphor is when you put one thing in terms of another to create understanding.
The computer recycle bin is a functional container into which files are placed to be recycled later into disk space that can be used again.
Seems to me it's actually a recycle bin, not a metaphor for one.
Nothing you said is a contradiction to my post. "Serving" the user means assisting and empowering the user to do their job more efficiently (which has nothing to do with Bonzi Buddy).
Furthermore, company policy is different from a misguided admin creating their own policy.
As I said:
"There are some things that each side is correct in putting their foot down and drawing a line in the sand - and this one is firmly owned by the users."
You are correct that it is pointless to delete things twice. However you are wasting your time and defeating the purpose of the system by emptying your recycle bin.
Unless you are running some ancient relic of a home desktop, storage space should hardly be an issue. When deleting extremely large files they bypass the recycle bin and are directly deleted...so there is no need to pedantically empty it. As you noted, it is a waste of user time to do so.
However I can't tell you how many times I have found occasion to desire something that was previously deleted...perhaps months ago. Sometimes we make stupid decisions. Sometimes when going through and cleaning up files we accidentally delete the newer version and leave the older version. Sometimes when working ona project we make changes that later on don't end up working out so well and we decide we want to roll back to a later date. There are countless unpredictable reasons why we may want to retrieve a previously deleted file.
The correct way to use the recycle bin is to delete things and then forget about them. If you ever need that space, which you won't, you can manually empty it. Until that time, it is a waste of your time to empty it, and will probably come back to bite you someday when you realize it was a providing a function that's actually useful.
I think anyone who swears theyve never needed to recover a deleted file is either full of it or has a bad memory.
I think it's highly unlikely that a majority of users immediately empties the recycle bin the minute a file appears in it. That's pure projection on the part of a nutty admin.
Dude, think about that for a minute. Sure, there are people like that. Is hiding the recycle bin really going to solve your problems with them? If they're too stupid to know not to pour coffee on their machine, or to read and understand a message telling them they can't send more mail until they delete something... I submit that, yeah, they ought to have their machines taken away. Hiding the recycle bin does exactly nothing but piss off competent computer users.
Because for one thing, the bin by default limits itself to 10% of the size of the disk, and I'm pretty sure that for larger disks, no matter what percentage you select, there's a hard limit to how much space the bin will take up (automatically deleting things to keep under the max size). And what the hell does RAM have to do with it? Windows is not keeping the contents of the recycle bin in RAM, for heaven's sake.