[Freedombox-discuss] Initial User Experience

[joshuaspodek@yahoo.com (Joshua Spodek)]

On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 12:21 +0000,
freedombox-discuss-request at lists.alioth.debian.org wrote:
> we can start show a little "risk meter", still 
> far down in the "safe zone".  Jim can perhaps (depending on the UI) 
> click on this risk meter to get to those questions on preferred risk 
> level, but if not it is simply informed to him what his actions cause
> on the risk meter.

To give the risk meter meaning, we could "calibrate" it by showing other
relevant risk levels on the meter. For example, if Jim uses it to blog,
the risk meter could show risks relative to using various cloud blog
services or hosting on his own rented server. If he uses it for Diaspora
the risk meter could show risks relative to using Facebook for various
activities.

Quantifying risk levels could be difficult -- at least I can't think of
how to do it as I'm sitting here writing, but it may be possible. Are
there any sites or services that quantify risks out there already? We
might need legal disclaimers for all I know. But if we generally have
the idea that FreedomBoxes lower risks, shouldn't we be able to
communicate that to users?

(For that matter, we could also tell Jim how he could lower his risk if
desired, or what more he could do if he relaxed his risk level. We could
also use it to motivate developers to find ways to allow users to lower
risks even more -- a productive race to the bottom. Maybe developers at
web-based services would be motivated to lower risks too if they saw how
they compared with others.)

Anyway, the big picture is that since the risk can never be zero, nor is
there an absolute measure of risk, relative levels may be the most
meaningful.