Thanks for your thoughtful replies. I see one clear disagreement, and speculate about a more-root divergence.
> configurable in one place in the software just isn't reasonable [...] auto-sync doesn't have anything to do with translator update checks
Microsoft has in one place (something very vaguely like) toggles to control the uploading of web history, hand writing, voice commands, and more. Different features of different apps. With explanations of the functionality lost if the user doesn't opt-in to each. One place, for privacy preferences.
The Zotero privacy documentation page similarly gathers in one place, recipes for opting-out of network-based features, with descriptions of use.
Software preferences having a privacy section is a thing. Firefox, chromium, etc.
I'm unclear on why it isn't reasonable for Zotero software to have similar.
> we consider privacy in all our decisions and believe we've made the right calls [...] If you disagree with a specific decision, that's fine — come to the forums and we can discuss
I suggest there's currently a shift in privacy best practices, from one-size-fits-all "make the right calls", to having user preferences for privacy.
So that's the sort-of clear disagreement.
But part of it may be a deeper difference in perspectives...
perhaps call it network minimalism.
When using Zotero, I'd spend more time grovelling over previously collected papers, than collecting new ones. A task that could be done, without loss of functionality, with the net disconnected. My expectation then is, that this local tool, working with local data, will not then start using the net merely because it becomes available. Or rather, that I can easily dissuade such behavior.
Now perhaps that expectation is becoming "old fashioned", as we switch from desktop, to phone apps with only lightly bridled communication lives of their own.
Which might be an underlying issue. Zotero might be thought of as a phone app which just happens to run on desktop-local data. Or it might be thought of as a traditionally desktop application. Design decisions appropriate to the former, might feel a bit odd in the latter. "Local tool" might mean different things.
> I can't recall a single complaint about our approach
In this thread, there was someone suggesting my short paraphrasing of the linked docs was getting it totally wrong. I'm not sure how widely your users are even aware of the approach. It seems users generally aren't. Which, tying things back around, is one of the motivations for having clearly explained privacy preference options.
Thanks for an interesting conversation. Just in case you haven't seen it, the subthread with jmiserez might also be of interest.