F21 Self Contained Change: Security Policy In The Installer

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2014-03-17 at 13:10 +0100, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:

> And to sum it up a bit -- I think this feature doesn't complicate things
> for users who want to ignore it or who don't understand it. If you think
> it does, please tell me about it and I'll do my best to fix it. On the
> other hand, if somebody wants to care about security policies, they have
> an easy and comfortable choice.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is quite right.

As I understand it, it's fairly well established that if people see a UI
element, they - or, at least, an appreciable amount of them - will want
to interact with it, or at least understand it. *Some* people may follow
this thought process:

Path 1
------

"Oh, hey, there's this thing here."
"Hum. I don't understand it at all."
"Well, I guess I'll just ignore it and carry on."

which is what you're assuming, and would give an okay outcome. However,
I think it's fairly well known that quite a lot of people will follow
this one:

Path 2
------

"Oh, hey, there's this thing here."
"Hum. I don't understand it at all."
"Well, crap. I'm installing an OS. That's a pretty major operation. I
think I'd better understand everything that's going on before I carry
on."
<clickety>
"Huh. content...policy...profile? What is all this stuff about? What
does it mean? What should I do?"

This one goes one of about three ways. If we're really lucky:

"Well, I guess I'd better go read the docs."
<reads docs>
"That was a clear, short and cogent explanation! I learned something, an
now I can continue!"

If we're less lucky:

"I guess I'll go Google around and see if I find something useful. Jeez,
why does this have to be so complicated?"

If we're less lucky:

"Man, screw this crap, if I have to go read an encyclopaedia just to get
it installed, I'll go do something else".

And finally, some people will probably follow this one:

Path 3
------

"Oh, hey, there's this thing here."
"Hum. I don't understand it at all."
"Well, what the hell, I'm a smart cookie, I'll just power through."
<clickety>
"Hum. Content...policy...profile? I don't really know what any of those
things are. But reading is hard. I'll just make some sensible-looking
guesses!"
<clickety>

I suspect you can figure out the possible outcomes of path 3. ;)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
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