All UIs are inconsistent to some extent, like with menus, or with how the steering wheel behaves when backing a car up. All we demand is that it be done well, which is a tautology.
Right, except it wasn't done well in this case. The game is great, the UI not so much. Some menus require the arrow keys to navigate, some +-, others hjkl.
It's been a while since I last played, but there is a "Designation" menu which orders your dwarves to perform specific tasks. You want them to build a staircase where there was some rock before? Awesome, they'll do it. You want them to build a staircase after you already mined the block? No can do. No warning, no error message, simply nothing happens. You need to go through the other menus, build a staircase and move it there.
Except it makes sense if you realize that designations are for changing existing terrain and the language reflects that, so using it to "carve [a] staircase" out of thin air doesn't really make sense. Building one from the buildings menu in a space that has been mined out does.
I admit there are problems with the dwarf fortress interface, major ones, like job management. However this is not one of those problems.
Or rather - it's also a problem of information architecture to borrow the parlance from another field. The internal logical structure shouldn't be reflected in the external UI unless it's intuitive or discoverable.
Your 'this is all a tautology' point is neither interesting nor moves the conversation forward.
This is like making the point that the sky isn't really blue it just looks blue - technically correct, but unless you are answering the question of why it is blue, correcting somebody on this is boorish, not interesting.
In this case we are talking about Dwarf Fortress, near universally reviled for its interface, so yes, arguing that some people may theoretically prefer it is both hard to believe and makes it seem like you are just being contrarian.
