Trash folder and undelete option
*** Summarised idea from trials process ***
Occasionally you may delete a recording by accident or realise you want it back soon after for some other reason (e.g. someone else in the household also wanted to see it and you did not realise when you deleted it).
A possible solution is a simple deleted items folder or trash can holding say the last 3-5 deleted items. When in the trash can you could select an item to undelete it and restore it to the recordings list.
Occasionally you may delete a recording by accident or realise you want it back soon after for some other reason (e.g. someone else in the household also wanted to see it and you did not realise when you deleted it).
A possible solution is a simple deleted items folder or trash can holding say the last 3-5 deleted items. When in the trash can you could select an item to undelete it and restore it to the recordings list.
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Comments
Personally I am in favour of a one button delete but there should then be a mechanism to recover from a mistake by undeleting an item. As such I think the undelete feature idea now needs to be given a high priority as it really should have been introduced at the same time as the confirmation step on deletion was removed.
Agree, have no issue with the lack of an OK prompt but it's only truly an enhancement if you can undelete the recordings in the event of a mistake.
Yes in an ideal world the "trash can" suggestion is a good idea, but we have many more important issues that need to be sorted first.
I'd like to see the original confirmation message; which is pretty much the industry-standard way to handle delete operations (especially ones you can't recover).
Another issue with the one-press delete is that it's quite 'silent', and there's no on-screen feedback (other than the recordings shifting in the list). It's also quite responsive, so pressing the key quickly 3-4 times will delete 3-4 recordings.
In its simplest form the delete/remove action would now be a move to a trash folder. Thus over time the trash folder would grow in size and the amount of spare disk space steadily decrease to zero. When the disk space gets to zero by default the auto delete option that is on would cause the oldest recordings (which would be in the trash) to start being deleted.
Whilst that is a workable solution some users may prefer an option to control how much or how long trash is kept, e.g. to be able to configure that items are purged from trash after 7 days or 1 month or to say the trash folder may grow no bigger than 10% of the total disk space.
Also the basic reliance on the main auto delete option being on means that is no longer really an option but a neccesity hence it would be better to have a separate purge of the trash (regardless of that option value) either when the disk is full or at some user configured time or quantity as in the previous paragraph.
Coupled with this is then how the box reports free disk space. At present when one goes into the recording list there is a clear statement of the free space. If one implements the simple trash folder relying on the auto delete option then eventually you get into a state where you are running with a trash folder taking up all the previously free space and thus the free space report would indicate the disk was always almost full which would be concerning to see for some users.
As such the free space report may need adjusting to exclude the trash folder from disk usage to give the user a better feel for how much space they have for recordings they are actively keeping (i.e. excluding those being kept in trash).
From my experience, generally implementing a trash system (i.e. changing removes to moves) and then a purging/reaper system is not that difficult, although of course this needs to have a simple user interface for the recover too which is more work, but does then need user testing to confirm it works as expected.
Whilst overall I would prefer the later (i.e. quick delete but with an undelete option to cover mistakes and also for more general mistake issues even if a confirm step does exist) I can see that if it really were a lot of work to implement an undelete option then there are many other features YouView could choose to give a higher priority.
Even if such a feature were to be implemented I can see that some people may still prefer to have a confirmation for each delete so I would suggest that would then become and option (either on or off by default depending on feedback YouView trialling produced).
>>> As such the free space report may need adjusting to exclude the trash folder from disk usage to give the user a better feel for how much space they have for recordings they are actively keeping (i.e. excluding those being kept in trash).
That's the way Virgin's TiVo works - once something is in the trash can the space it uses is excluded from the used/included in the free space indicator as if it's no longer still on the box.
This leads to the annoyingly technically illiterate claim that 'deleted items use no space' when clearly they do, but that's something we techies just have to endure ;-)
It keeps things simpler for the user who should never have to empty the trash as the box should always overwrite the oldest deleted recordings as and when more space is needed.
IMO the trash can should be listed in MyView to the left of the recordings.
As I wrote in the thread about the software update, was the change made as a result of the trial surveys? was it a result of user requests made directly? was it as a result of requests made on the forum (public or during the trials)? or was it for some other reason?
My understanding is YouView have a set of testers (not the triallists from the summer) who are perhaps YouView and partner company employees etc plus potentially others and that they test changes or ideas for new features out on them/use them as a sounding board as one way to consider what to pursue.
So, although I personally would like to have seen an undelete function launched simultaneously with the removal of the delete confirmation step, I would assume they did trial the change to the delete feature (without a corresponding undelete feature) and that they did not get significant negative feedback, did get positive feedback and thus decided it was a good change.
Personally, I think the implementation of a recycle bin / trash can would be the best solution. As there was / is no such facility at the moment, it seems a little premature to remove the 'are you sure' stage in deleting recorded programs.
I'm assuming the one-press delete is to make deleting several recordings a bit quicker and less irritating; as it doesn't make that much difference when deleting only one or two items.
If that's the reasoning, then would the ability to select and delete multiple items in one step be more useful? Then you could delete a batch of items without having to confirm each individual item, and not sacrifice any safety measures.
Edit - I just realised gomez made the same point above.
You click on the delete button, nothing happens. You think you missed the button and click again. In fact what happens is the box was thinking of deleting the recording and as you clicked twice, after a delay, the 1st recording and the recording one below it is deleted.
It is bonkers to think of single press delete as an improvement and cannot understand anyone arguing for it. You should never, ever make a destructive change to data without explicit confirmation. When did that rule stroke off?
YV box has the best of intentions but it fails on the delivering them -- big time.
Make the box work properly first!
I'll get me coat...