I'm currently in the process of writing together some basic UI guidelines at work, and one of the special cases was exactly this: If the dialog asks for confirmation to cancel a process, it must ask, "cancel this process", and the buttons must be labeled "yes" and "no", never "cancel".

The problem is in the verbiage of the question. A person writing a dialog should consider "Cancel" something like a reserved word in a programming language.

I've seen "Cancel this action?" "OK" "Cancel" before. Not fun either

That also shows why the "repeat the verb again" can be more confusing. At least it wasn't "Cancel this action?" "Cancel" "Cancel"

On the other hand, I think Yes or No are clearly an answer to "Cancel this action?"

This is the edgiest of edge cases. Intuitively I would assume that such a dialogue box may be a UX smell and there could be better ways to perform a two stage confirmation.

Or you can just bend the UX rules for this one instance.

Or you can consider whether cancel is the best verb anyway; what about “end” or “stop” or “abort”?

If you get lucky, it has a window close button on the right top as a safe way out. If you're unlucky... better have that power cable in reach.

Reminds me of this gem from Microsoft:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/05/24/171215/windows-10-u...

> In a move guaranteed to annoy many people, Microsoft has "jumped the shark" on encouraging users to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10. Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box.

And people wonder why so many are concerned about the github buyout

I have a feeling pulling the plug would cancel the action.

Hmmm, maybe... or perhaps you get a call that their monitor doesn't work...

On reconnecting the power cable we find all files deleted anyway.