Here's a usability report from one of our GHOP students: http://ijailbreak.com/drupal.html (please post feedback to http://drupal.org/node/197219#comment-652618). He interviews three test subjects: his mom, his brother, and his Dad. In it, he points out that all three of his test subjects got totally blocked at this error and needed him to step in and fix it in order for them to continue. This is the *second* page of the installation. If we are losing people before they even get Drupal installed, we are screwed. I realize the argument against including a files directory by default is that Mac OS does this insane behaviour of overwriting the contents of "files" with another directory of the same name, so there's a chance of completely blowing away someone's files directory. So as far as I can see, we're left with a couple of options: - Revert the existing behaviour, which at least allows mere mortals to get Drupal installed, even if it's a somewhat annoying thing to deal with later. - Include the blank files directory anyway, and trust that people are either reading upgrade instructions, or not running production websites off of a Mac OSX desktop/laptop. Thoughts? -Angie