Re: [Usability] Automagic cleanup of home folder

[Maarten Menheere <m menheere gmx net>]

On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 22:51 -0500, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 10:35 +0100, Maarten Menheere wrote:
> > Usually when working on something I make a new folder for it an put the
> > files there. In that folder after working on something for a while I get
> > a lot of old cruft I don't need. I then make an Old folder and put al
> > the garbage that could still potatialy have information I need in there.
> > 
> > My point is after working on something for a while things start to get
> > messy. You don't even wan to see the My Documents folder of my parents
> > XP box. I have probably given up on organising that one.
> > 
> > As disk start bigger the need to delete stuff gets less important (not
> > talking about video but ordinary files) I think its a good idea to just
> > magicaly let files slip under the waterline after a sertain time. That
> > way you never have to delete anything and you only see what is current
> > in the Gui view of the filesystem.  
> 
> No.  no no no.  No.  It is quite common to have documents around you
> rarely (if ever) edit, but yet need to read.  We have tons of examples
> of this at my work (transcriptions and minutes of old board meetings),
> and even at home you see examples like people keeping notes and such.  I
> have a document on my disk now that's almost a year old, but I've never
> edited it (it's a PDF - I don't even have software to edit it, easily at
> least) that I open up for printing every couple weeks.  (It's a form.)

Well I think we argee here :), sorry for not being clear enough. The
filesystem view should only show files you use often. I did not intend
it to filter on last time saved but also used in some way, like opening
clicking etc. 

> Users need to organize their files.  That's their problem for being
> sloppy, just as if they left piles of paper on their real desk.

I agree but sometimes this just doesn't work. I've told my parents to
clean up their stuff loads of times (hmm this sounds weird :) ). And you
haven't seen my desk, I'm still looking for that autodesk cleaning
robot. If you are able to make things easier than you should IMHO. 

> A metadata system would also get around this, as users could search for
> all word processor documents less than a month old that contain the
> topic cheese, or whatever.
> 
> Simply hiding files from view (and thus likely making the user think
> they're gone) is *definitely* the wrong answer.

That's the one real problem I see. I'm not sure on a clean way of
showing to the user that files are not really gone just not shown. 
Possible solutions (bit of brainstorming here):
1. Nothing ever gets deleted on the assumption that this is possible in
the future with larger disks. Users have to get used to this. Do a
search for it when look for something less recent. You often don't know
where you put it anyhow. 
2. A show all files button. Hmm 
3. An archives row at the bottom of a filesystem view where less userd
files of the current folder are shown.
4. A virtual archives folder.

> > 
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> -- 
> Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
> AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.
> 
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