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"?

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Comments

[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...