Today's peeve

[ciphergoth]

Todays peeve is idiots who say "I got an error message" but are incapable of even attempting to read the message. Did it cross your mind that the text in that message might be for something, and you might learn something by reading it? If I don't know the error, how can I fix your problem? Or are all error messages just computerese for "SOMETHING FUCKED UP, MAKE SOMEONE ELSE FIX YOUR PROBLEM"?

Note: questions about TrustFlow here will be deleted henceforth. Check the TrustFlow for LiveJournal FAQ instead.

Comments

[redcountess]

Yup. 99% of my calls at Teletech were like that :-/

[vampwillow]

swap the current message for this one perhaps?

|======================================|
| ERROR                                |
|--------------------------------------|
| Something is wrong with this program |
|                                      |
| Action required:                     |
| Pull power lead out of computer      |
| and jump out of nearest window       |
|======================================|

[vampwillow]

proportional spacing is *so* annoying ;-)

[nnancy1964.livejournal.com]

My apologies for being your pet peeve.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Heh. Tip: If you get a really incomprehensible error, and you think you might ask someone else to help, write the error down word-for-word; the bits that are meaningless to you should be meaningful to them.

Incidentally, your TrustFlow results are already calculated and await your inspection...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

hear hear! If only people would at least write down the message.

Another peeve: I'll sometimes talk people through running the command prompt commands that I'd be running if only their server were picking up the )(*_(*_( phone. I'll have them type something ("no, don't write out 'space' hit the space bar") and hit enter. Then I'll wait patiently for them to read me back what the response was. Then ask, "what did it say?" "nothing." "no, look... " "D:\DS>" "no, above that." "Oh!" and they read the useful info that came back.

Why is it so hard to realize that the person on the phone is asking you to type things for a reason?

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

bonus tip for extra points: get the user to press PrintScreen and send you the error message

I woner if that would be a useful background utility - like the MS phone home error message when applications crash, a utility that you could open that would capture the error message and system state and submit them as a support request to your help desk, with a link that lets the help desk remote in to your system and fix it for you ;-)

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Well, quite a few error messages are blatent lies - Windows 98 used to specialise in claiming that the computer hadn't been shutdown properly, for example, or that things hadn't been installed...

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

Well yes, but at least if we're told that's what the screen says, we *know* it's that lie/situation rather than any other.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

That's a fair point from a techie perspective, because you'll know what sort of faults generate that sort of message, but from the point of view of the average user, if they know that what the screen says is untrue then they're likely to dismiss it as completely meaningless and not write it down.

I'm a technical writer so my life's work is to translate between Technical Jargon and English - and believe me, it's not an easy job. There's not much of a common frame of reference to work in...

[babysimon]

Irritating Woman at work seems to take Java stack traces as a personal affront - she'll always refer to it as "an absolute load of shit" having come up on her screen. Tone of voice suggests she would think the software was *much* less broken if it just said "An error has occurred" or somesuch.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

She'd be in favour of the Homebase website then... admire the second error message that gave me:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dennyd/152719.html

[barakta]

I get that a lot from my mum, and when talkiung her thru any kind of wizard/dialogue box she will automatically click on the the little cross at the top! I have no idea why this is instinctive to her.

At least when my dad lived at home he would obsessively copy out error messages and record conditions of crash obsessively. I can forgive his inability to cope with any OS written after 1980.

Fneh.

Natalya

[rixxin.livejournal.com]

My pet hate.

I had this little Kiwi "timp" [/Kiwi] trying to tell me she hadn't exceeded her mailbox storgage limit, but instead the "system is faulty". I then advised her to move or delete items, and this would rectify the problem.

Her: "I already deleted over 200 items, and it still won't work".
Me: "Well, it's the size of the items that counts, not the quantity...."
Her: "Yeah, but I only have 3 items, and they are all small".
Me: "Okay...how big are they?"
Her: "Well, I don't know, how do I find that out?"
Me: "......."
Her: "Hello?"
Me: "Yes, I'm here. I'm just struggling to work out how you know the items are small, if you don't know how to find out their size....?"

And the rest, is not worth typing.

[trappedinbox9.livejournal.com]

wow, thats pathetic

[rixxin.livejournal.com]

*nods furiously*

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

I'll side with the users on this one. The great majority of error messages (and indeed other messages) emmited by user interfaces are impressively useless. Like:

- (program suddenly disappears with no message)
- (program fails to start with no message)
- Segmentation fault
- The memory could not be "read"
- Illegal instruction
- Could not find FOO.DLL in ...
- The network is unreachable
- Drive E is not ready
- There has been a sharing violation
- Could not log on to server

There is really no excuse for any of these. Essentially the messages are saying: Something fucked up and we haven't even bothered to give you enough details for telephone/email help, so get someone technical over here and to your problem. Utter crap. I don't blame the users for not memorising them.

But then the following messages/interactions are not much better:

- Would you like to auto-archive your old messages?
- Would you like the browser to remember this password?
- Track changes to document on/off
- Whould you like to change the document from format X-N to format X?
- Make files available offline
- Synchronize mail messages

These interactions make some attempt at being meaningful, but there's really no chance for the first-time user to make an informed choice, or to understand the implications of something like "remember password". So yeah, users are dumb, or rather unwilling to debug the technology. But then the technology makes a superficial promise at being mature and then isn't. It's the software makers who need the kicking.

(OK it could be the users who need the kicking if there's a really great maker of user-friendly, solid software that doesn't give lousy interactions but users fail to take it up and go for McSoft instead, so the market kills the good software. But it's not that that you're peeved with the uers about, is it?)

Pavlos

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Yes, the messages are not particularly helpful most of the time. If I, a professional technical writer with a BSc in electronics, can't understand them then they must be utterly incomprehensible to the average user.

There's also the fact that most times when an error occurs you can sort it out with a shutdown and restart, without bothering technical support, and you don't know until after you've tried to restart and it hasn't worked that the error message was actually important on that particular occasion...

[selectnone.livejournal.com]

- Make files available offline

I'm still not entirely sure what that means...

[simont]

I so agree with you.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I like the bit about the antelope.

However, I disagree about doctors. Sometimes walking into the surgery and saying 'I have [condition] again, give me some more of the drug that worked last time please' saves both you and them a lot of time and trouble. It's not analogous to bug reports, because fixing a bug you've fixed with the help of a support person before should be something you now know how to do without help; getting a prescription, even for a known condition, is something which requires the presence of a doctor.

[ruis.livejournal.com]

It's not analogous to bug reports, because fixing a bug you've fixed with the help of a support person before should be something you now know how to do without help

That isn't necessarily the case.

If you are using commercial software and have a support agreement you can be in the position where you can't fix the problem even if you have that in house skills. Its a bit like opening up the tamper evident bit of any electrical equipment to fix something. Thats fine as long as you're prepared to have invalidated the warranty and never being able to ask for help if it breaks in the future.

Also if you have in-house SLAs you really aren't doing your dept. any favours by fixing a bug yourself unless its your team thats responsible for 'it'. When you finally work out that there is a fundamental flaw and try to get it fixed properly the first thing you have to do is prove its broken. If you have to say you've done stuff to fix it in the past you'll then have to prove that it wasn't your fixes that broke it.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Linked to in TrustFlow FAQ now, thanks!

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

So maybe, in a strange way, Kernighan was just ahead of his time when he designed ed.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you know this old Unix joke:

Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver," he says, "will usually know what's wrong."

[a-rare-bliss.livejournal.com]

hey-
alright i think i came to the right LJ//person
one of my friends has her like "top 50 stalkers" listed and i was wondering how you did it and stuff like that. im very curious to see who mine are. haha.
please get back to me.


thank you

<3

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

ITYM the LJ Trust Metric?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/community/trustmetrics/3544.html

Best error message ever

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I do quality assurance for a living (ducks in shame) and I can say AUTHORITATIVELY that Trustmetrics had an excellent error message. Normally, I get stuff like this:

"Server Error in '/' Application. Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. (etc., falling asleep already)"

Like my job isn't boring enough! In contrast, the Trustmetrics error message provided a link to what I would call "a really hot guy's LJ." Any error message that can inspire trans-Atlantic fantasies is, without doubt, truly incredible - but probably my reaction is not that of the typical user. However, just a few more of them would really change my attitude about work.

Re: Best error message ever

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks! If your plan is that there should be more hot guys in computing, I am so there :-)

Re: Best error message ever

[darkchosenone.livejournal.com]

I second that!!

Re: Best error message ever

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Mmm, more hot guys who know how to code ... (shudder of pleasure ...)

[reclaiming.livejournal.com]

I loved TrustFlow. It was quite cool. Try not to take it personally when people need help understanding the word "refresh". I thought the FAQs were quite useful. Then again, I'm only *occasionally* stupid beyond all reason.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Next time I'll make the page reload automatically...

[still-serenity.livejournal.com]

This seems like as good a place as any to comment. I see that you and I have some common interests and friends, so I've added you to my friend list.

You won't see any TrustFlow questions from me, I promise. :)