Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This Message Does Not Exist

kmjn.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 278 posts

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#111

Post by bongodongobob »

lostlogin wrote: post #103
lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

How about your phrasing? ‘your data has been deleted on the server, but that your client still has a cached copy’

"Hello IT? Yes, all my data has been deleted please help! Something about a cash-ay and the server is down!"

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#112

Post by caseyy »

lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow?

“The message has been deleted, but your app still shows it. You will not be able to see the message again if you discard it, and it will disappear soon.”

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#113

Post by stall84 »

Rastonbury wrote: post #43
cortesoft wrote: post #36

Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.

"the message does not exist in our system, only in your browser as text, copy and save it if you want to keep it, if you refresh this page the text will disappear"

this cracked me up !

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#114

Post by caseyy »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #84
klysm wrote: post #4

This is the most Microsoft error message I have ever seen

Only for a while until someone changes it to "Something went wrong"

Don’t forget “Oops!” — the element of surprise.

The developer doesn’t know what went wrong and things definitely don’t go wrong all the time at Microsoft! This is as surprising to the developer as it is to you!

It’s also pleasantly humane, not like “ERROR:”, meaning it’s more of a silly and fun oopsie doopsie than a systems engineering failure.

Don’t you just feel better as the user seeing that? It’s not the systems engineer’s fault and neither is it yours. It just kind of happened. What even is “it”? No one knows! Computers are weird — eh? Nothing like a whimsical hiccup in your computing to brighten the day.

Whatever you were doing, whether it’s saving work, buying something, or completing critical forms, some of that was probably done, or maybe not, but who really knows? Hehe, not us — we are just as surprised!

Oh, and don’t call support with this stuff. There’s not enough to go on even if you reported it for us to investigate. It’s just one of these things, you know?

Forget about it and move on buddy! You’ve got an essay to rewrite/a purchase to figure out/a critical form to complete again, and who knows what will happen then! Will it go through? Maybe, maybe not. It will be surprising if it doesn’t! Isn’t it just so exciting?

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#115

Post by stall84 »

mkl wrote: post #91
lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…

Yeah but that would be taking nearly all of the Microsoft out of it ...

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#116

Post by galaxyLogic »

The problem is that the message does not speak the truth. If you can read a message it clearly must exist because you cannot read non-existent messages, can you? Can anyone? CAN ANYONE HERE READ NON-EXISTENT MESSAGES?

The message should have said "This message is not saved on the server. If you close this window without copying and saving its text you cannot retrieve it from the server ever again.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#117

Post by mortenjorck »

lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

Some good passes at UX copy in this thread, but for this application, I’d recommend against trying to explain the underlying technical mechanism at play and instead frame it in terms of outcomes.

“This message has been deleted, but you still have a temporary copy. If you need to save anything from it, you should do so before discarding the temporary copy.”

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#118

Post by SoftTalker »

femto wrote: post #96
mkl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…

A typical person's head will explode at the mention of the words "cache" and "server". They will then go into a blind panic that their data is going to be "permanently deleted".

Yeah you can't use words like that. Even many people who won't panic at the word "server" don't really understand what it is.

"This message no longer exists in your Inbox. If you close it, you will not be able to open it again."

What's more amazing is that this state actually happens often enough in Outlook that somebody wrote code to detect it, and to create a message box for the user to warn them about it.

Post reply on HN