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

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Autor: intrigeri
Data:  
A: Tails user experience & user interface design
Assumpte: Re: [Tails-ux] Terminology for the web assistant: installation media
Hi,

u wrote (03 Jul 2015 14:59:11 GMT) :
> And also, as pointed out to me by somebody else, "a flash memory" or
> "another flash memory" seems wrong, as one cannot count one, two or more
> memories ;)


Actually, it works in some cases, but IMO not when speaking about
storage devices that happen to contain _some amount of_ flash memory.

> So, I am suggesting either to use:


> * flash (memory) device
> * removable (flash) device
> * flash (memory) drive
> * removable (flash) media


I've re-read most of this thread (all of the part I had kept locally,
possibly I missed bits that I had deleted already), took a step back,
took the context into account (we're having a Tails Installer sprint
currently), and now I'm tempted to suggest treating SD cards as
a corner case: first, because the generalization to both cover SD
cards and USB sticks is what makes the problem at hand hard to
solve -- we're trying to find terminology that both lets 99.xx% of our
users think of a USB flash drive, *and* that lets 0.xx% of our users
understand that other kinds of removable flash storage media may work
too; second, because booting Tails off a SD card rarely works, and
thus:

* letting users believe that it works just as well on SD cards as on
USB flash drives is misleading (and can result in discouraging
failures);
* AFAIK is only/mostly used by power-users who'll know that their
computer can boot off a SD card, and then these people are likely
used to convert "USB flash drive" to "SD card" on-the-fly.

So, perhaps just going for "USB stick" or "USB flash drive" would work
for everyone, and make things simpler to understand for 99.xx% of
our users.

The canonical page [1] about USB sticks on Wikipedia is "USB flash
drive"... and the list of redirects to it [2] is impressive, but
I would personally stick to "USB flash drive".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive
[2] http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=USB_flash_drive

> This question is strongly related to
> https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/8866


... and is therefore currently blocking a great deal of our work on
Tails Installer.

Cheers,
--
intrigeri