[Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

Mon May 24 18:04:16 UTC 2010

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 10:21 AM, William Pietri <william at scissor.com>wrote:

> That did cross my mind, and it was tempting. But practically, many busy
> journalists, causal readers, and novice editors may base a lot of their
> initial reaction on the name alone, or on related language in the
> interface. By choosing an arbitrary name, some fraction of people will
> dig deeper, but another fraction will just retain their perplexity
> and/or alienation.

This is a really good point, and brings up another point for everyone to
consider.  If the name is not *immediately* evocative of something to the
casual reader, it might as well be called the "Hyperion Frobnosticating
Endoswitch".  It will be a blank slate as far as journalists and the world
at large is concerned.  I think we're better off with a term that gets us in
the ballpark with little or no mental energy than we are picking something
that has clinical precision, but takes more than a few milliseconds of
consideration to get the the gist.

Rob