which in your particular example happens to be terrible, as you would discover if you actually tested it in a real-world setting
My points all come from real-world experience, both as a user and developer. These unwanted UI changes irritate me enough to complain about them, but apparently my opinion doesn't count at all, because these so-called "experts" will only parrot their vague "studies show that X, therefore you are wrong"? These "user studies" naturally bias towards the worst of the worst. In fact, you are displaying exactly the sort of dismissive holier-than-thou attitude that I've been on the receiving end of, multiple times, and I can personally tell you that it really fucking pisses me off.
Think about it: if I'm the user of your software, and you change it so that it breaks my workflow, I am not going to be happy regardless of whatever justification you provide.
Having been on the receiving end of that, I've learned not to do it to my users, because I know how it feels.
I honestly have no idea what you are going on about. Nobody else is talking about “changes”, workflow-breaking or otherwise.
You said “In fact, I'd say this is even clearer, putting the question at the end and immediately following it with the two choices:”
Did you ever test this explicitly vs. the recommended alternative of using verbs for labels? (Ideally by doing a user study, but heck, I’ll take anything...)
I claim that this has been empirically tested and found to be inferior (i.e. result in higher error rate) in a variety of studies, both in published research and internal to various large companies which then got baked into their design guidelines. This was a subject of active research in the 1970s–1990s (and perhaps before).
You can find reasonably good advice about the subject in any number of introductory interface design textbooks, etc.
In this particular case, where user data is being irrevocably deleted, errors are especially harmful.
Edit: Maybe the word “terrible” in my previous comment was unfair. Sorry to be inflammatory.
My points all come from real-world experience, both as a user and developer. These unwanted UI changes irritate me enough to complain about them, but apparently my opinion doesn't count at all, because these so-called "experts" will only parrot their vague "studies show that X, therefore you are wrong"? These "user studies" naturally bias towards the worst of the worst. In fact, you are displaying exactly the sort of dismissive holier-than-thou attitude that I've been on the receiving end of, multiple times, and I can personally tell you that it really fucking pisses me off.
Think about it: if I'm the user of your software, and you change it so that it breaks my workflow, I am not going to be happy regardless of whatever justification you provide.
Having been on the receiving end of that, I've learned not to do it to my users, because I know how it feels.