Re: delete-selection-mode

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Stallman writes:

 > How about if we find out empirically.

The way to do this is to turn it on by default, *provisionally* for
*one* pretest[1], and listen for the screams.  Otherwise people who just
update but don't read these interminable and terminally boring threads
won't be part of the test, and the results will be seriously biased.

Note that making an effort to gather data on less active posters
and/or inexperienced users does *not* mean that their responses should
be interpreted the same way as you do those of experienced users.  
You stil have to factor in the question of "dynamic efficiency" (ie,
whether having Emacs behave similarly to other apps in this respect
might inhibit the process of learning to use Emacs effectively).  We
can hope that their posts will include comments that can be used to
infer the strength of such effects.

Of course the beta testers should be warned, eg, in the splash screen
and in NEWS.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Or perhaps the current pretest process is too advanced for this
kind of thing, and it should be pushed back to the first pretest of
the next release.