Re: [Tails-ux] Terminology for the web assistant: clone

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Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: Tails user experience & user interface design
Subject: Re: [Tails-ux] Terminology for the web assistant: clone
spencerone@???:
>>> Ok Google:
>>> "copy" is going to be a much more prevalent computer term
>>> that a user would be familiar with the first time they encounter
>>> Tails. In
>>> any given day, a computer user is often copying a file, copying some
>>> text,
>>> copying a link or any other number of scenarios.
>>>
>>> The word "clone" on the other hand, is a term a much smaller subset
>>> of new
>>> users might be familiar with in relation to their computer, those who
>>> might
>>> have experience cloning a git repo, for example.
>>>
>>
>> Sajolida:
>> Yeah, that was my issue with the word "clone" but then several people
>> said that "clone" was probably ok. It's clearly not as prevalent as
>> "copy" but I thought it would work as a metaphor here.
>>
>> I'm also wondering whether "copy" could be too generic and ambiguous in
>> some cases. Until now when you "clone" a Tails you get a full-feature
>> Tails (with automatic upgrade and optional persistence), while when you
>> only "copy" the ISO image on a USB stick (for example using `dd` in
>> Linux) you don't get those properties.
>>
>> To summarize, I agree with you that "copy" is less jargon but on the
>> other hand "clone" is probably ok and might be useful in some cases.
>>
>
> I, too, agree with the prevalence of 'Copy'. However, people of all
> levels of technical experience will have some familiarity with the
> concept of 'Clone' either from Star Wars or cloning animals, so I think,
> it is okay that people newly associate this concept with a computing
> experience, especially considering how ineffectively broad the concept
> of 'Copy' can be given all its various meanings.
>
>>
>> I create a ticket to tackle this phrasing issue. See
>> https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/9433. And took note of your ideas.
>> We were anyway already considering rephrasing all this.
>
> I [sloppily] added this and my previous thoughts to the ticket.


Thanks for doing that. It's more comfortable to discuss by email but
it's also important to dump information into Redmine (ideally after
summarizing it like you did).

Right now I'm tempted to stick with "Clone" in our first implementation
and then see if it raises more problems than "Copy" (that we've been
using until now in our initial designs for the router at least).

NB: I also liked "duplicate" as proposed by others but it's not clear to
me that it solves the issues I have with both "copy" and "clone".

--
sajolida