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       |
|======================================|

[nnancy1964.livejournal.com]

My apologies for being your pet peeve.

[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...

[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.

[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.

[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

[simont]

I so agree with you.

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

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

[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

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.

[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.

[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. :)