Untrusted personal key (Too frightening)?

I have two friends that think that the warnings for accepting new personal keys is too alarming, and I’m wondering if this was chosen by design to make people think twice before accepting a new personal key.

At first I thought that maybe it was a language difference since my first language is Spanish, but I’m not so sure. At least in Spanish its not the same to say “Untrusted personal key” than let’s say “This personal key hasn’t been verified yet”.

I was going to make the change only on the Spanish translation, but I kind of found a trend when I found this other description:

“This user’s personal key is untrusted!”

I notice while using kontalk in the tablet and a phone that some times the warning are different and they have a longer description that explain what they mean by untrusted and what has to be done. But other times (in phones I believe) users are left with noting more than “Untrusted personal key” and “This user’s personal key is untrusted!”, which I believe can be interpreted with “STOP, Some body is trying to do identity theft of your friend”, which could be true, but the only similar personal experience I can think of is web sites certificates. When I see those waring on the browser there is always a button that saying “get me out of here” implying that it is unusual for this to happen and putting me in a state of disbelief.

Now this could be useful so that people really take the time to understand what has to be done and that checking for keys with their friends it’s very important, but I think it can also scare users away. I think that what it should say is “This user’s personal key hasn’t been verify”, which will also trigger a doubt to the user and encourage him to look for the meaning without being so alarming.

So was this chosen of words made deliberated or am I misunderstanding? Maybe the literal Spanish translation that is in place right now is wrong. Thank you.

NOTE: I’m not a grammar Nazi so I probably made a lot of mistakes on words and the syntax while wring this post my self xD, but it’s not the grammar or the wording but the meaning I’m trying to understand. So sorry in advance C:

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Thanks for detailed though about a very important concern for us: security vs ease of use.

The analogy you make with web browser certificates is right, although in a peer-to-peer verification system it doesn’t apply because for web certificates you just trust the issuer and then every certificate issued by it are implicitly trusted and valid.
In a p2p environment, people are the verifiers.

That being said, I had other messages about this from other users as well, that message does seem frightnening :slight_smile: incidentally I tend to agree with you but lacked enough motivation to actually edit the message.

I guess a message more like what you’re proposing shouldn’t harm so much. @abika and @a.cappelli87 I’d like your opinion on this please (and anybody else who wants to speak as well).

Your English is good, but please don’t refer to Nazis in such an inappropriate way.

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I can’t check right now which message is displayed where/when but I agree with @arielenter that

Untrusted personal key

and

This user’s personal key is untrusted!

sounds way too alarming than it actually is. Depending on the situation is could be

Unconfirmed key / Key not verified (yet)

or

Personal key changed / New personal key

instead.

The desktop client only shows a message box with “New key for contact” asking if the new key should be used instead of the old one.

However, explicit user interaction is a MUST imo. But I think we agree on that.


@Stefan see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grammar%20Nazi . It’s a slang term not meant seriously in any way.

Well if it’s all right I’m going to edit the Spanish wording, which would be a matter of replacing two words from “Clave personal no confiable” to “Clave personal sin confirmar”.

EDIT: Never mind, the right thing to do is to wait for the main description to change first (which I’m assume is the English version). Also I see that the Spanish translation is being taking care by a user named julio amoros, and unless he sees this conversation he may not agree with the change. I’ll try to contact him although I haven’t found a way to do so in Weblate.

You can always mark it as needing review, or leave a comment below the related string.

Thanks @tetris4 I’ll do that. Thanks :slight_smile:

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Julio Amoros commented on a string about this, I’ve directed him here for further discussion.
I think I’ll follow @abika suggestion.

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Ok, I have read the Ariel’s good explanation, and if all of you decide to make this change I agree.
Both options have ads & cons but we can try this way …
So we will wait for the english change (or when you decide) and we will change the translation.
Thanks for all the good job all of you are making

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I’m very sorry, I didn’t notice that it was possible to leave comments on weblate’s changes and I should have chosen “need review” as suggested by @tetris4 . I did fill out where it says “Commit message”, but in my browser seemed to behave a little buggy, and of course, it doesn’t give you a lot space to commend and discus. Thank you for your patience @jamoros , it’s very nice to meet another Spanish speaker in the community :slight_smile:

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@arielenter “Usted es bienvenido” just a google translator joke :wink:

I believe this should be fine:

Thanks @daniele_athome this is awesome. Thank you for considering my suggestion. Thank you.