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[Todd Zankich <388656@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Does anyone ever say this in an office setting: "Hey George, where'd you
put the file I was looking at this morning?"

"Oh, that one?  I moved it to the trash.  But I can restore it."

No, of course not.  That's stupid.  If anyone said that I'd think they
were an idiot. So why does my OS come off that way, especially one that
got almost everything else so right, to the point where I am continually
amazed?  It makes me feel sad and disgusted.

Congrats for not flat-out copying Microsoft, but is copying Apple any
better?  As someone who has had to use a Mac for almost 2 years at work,
I'm absolutely positive that OSX is not an extremely worthy model to
imitate, either.

We don't need a system of metaphors designed to completely obfuscate the
terms that have evolved to describe things most accurately already.  On
a computer when you get rid of a file, regardless of any potential
holding bin, the concept is that you have decided to part with it
forever.  That fact that it can still be restored, somehow, is NOT a
conscious part of the workflow at hand.  It is merely an artifact of the
virtual nature of computers.  A file can be restored, sure, but that
fact exists outside of the conscious workflow.  So why does my OS make
me consider irrelevant information?

The fact that computers are virtual and operations can be reversed or
undone is immaterial.  If you're working on a song, you can delete a
note.  If you're writing a story, you can delete a paragraph.
Conceptually, it's gone at that point, erased from your conscious work.
Likewise, you can delete/erase/remove/discard a file, in terms of a file
management app.  It's NOT a movement or a relocation, conceptually.

The operation I have in mind when I throw something out is not to store
it.  It's to DISCARD it, generally forever.  I'm DONE with it.  It's no
longer in the picture.  "Move to trash" by no means describes what I'm
doing.  For all I care, the janitor can take whatever I put in there,
and haul it away, all without any further consideration from me.
(Besides, trash cans in real life have discarded gum and tissues.
Sick!) So aside from just being irrelevant, the metaphor being used
doesn't even correctly describe the situation.

It's a unix system, so maybe the item should be "Remove file."  That'd
be fine.  "Delete" is fine, too.  It corresponds with the "undelete"
operation.  The reverse operation of remove would be "restore."

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to nautilus in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/388656

Title:
  Non-intuitive term "Move to trash"

Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
  Confirmed
Status in Nautilus:
  New
Status in “nautilus” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: nautilus

  When browsing through file context menu, I've noticed that I couldn't
  find a command to delete it. Only after examining each item, I found
  "Move to trash".

  IMHO it's unintuitive. An user doesn't want to move a file/folder, but
  to remove it (the fact that there's an undo - a trash, shouldn't
  change the terminology). The term "move" misses what user wants to do.

  Simple "Delete" would be *much easier to spot*, especially when the
  menu has many items (16 in my case). It would be simpler and it would
  be shorter.

  When user enables permanent deleting in preferences, the term could be
  "Delete permanently".

  
  The issue was already raised many times before in some places
  (e.g. http://www.mail-archive.com/usability@xxxxxxxxx/msg03430.html - see 4. "Move to Trash"
  or http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1007979 - task "Search sample document from a specific option, delete and then restore it.") but no action was taken.

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