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Should error messages apologize? (2013)

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Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#231

Post by ambigious7777 »

passwordoops wrote: post #126
hbn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame Google for popularizing that. Honestly it was fine enough for a YouTube error, "we couldn't find that video." But then everyone started copying it, including Microsoft who, in Windows 8, updated the blue screen of death to have a "whoopsie poopsie! Your computer has a widdle boo boo!" type message, accented with a :( sad face emoticon. Which I can guarantee was presented to countless people who lost real work…

As an aside we once set a labmates' welcome screen to the blue screen of death. We let him angrily restart the laptop 3 times before letting on. This predated the annoying :( which I think would have led him to break the computer after the second try

Reminds me of the time when we switched around all the icons on the desktop (ie chrome => file explorer, recycle bin => vlc) of my friend's laptop. He eventually gave up and launched the programs from command line.

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#232

Post by PeeMcGee »

quatrefoil wrote: post #193
wseqyrku wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this one from Google which is kind of peculiar. Your client does not have permission to get URL / from this server. _That’s all we know._

Yeah, that one was always a bit weird because it's essentially a lie: no, you know more. You're not telling me and that's fine, but come on.

I imagined it being sort of tongue in cheek, like saying "who wants to know?". _That's all we know_ minimizes alarm to laymen while communicating that the page contains no other interesting information.

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#233

Post by seabass-labrax »

jerbear4328 wrote: post #194
photochemsyn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of haiku error messages (as in Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett's Good Omens). "Site not found" becomes, with some LLM assistance: Amidst cyberspace vast, Site elusive, lost in void, Unreachable code.

That isn't a valid haiku, and it's much less clear, in my opinion. If you give me a nice big "404 Not Found" up front and then include a poem, HTTP cat, or easter egg, that would give the page personality while still being immediately useful.

Of course, it is still both a 404 HTTP response and a proper HTML webpage - so both the user agent and the website have an opportunity to explain the error. If both of them try to be funny, though, that's no good.

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#234

Post by seabass-labrax »

rzzzt wrote: post #204
photochemsyn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of haiku error messages (as in Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett's Good Omens). "Site not found" becomes, with some LLM assistance: Amidst cyberspace vast, Site elusive, lost in void, Unreachable code.

A Salon article inspired many examples from readers: https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/error-haiku.en.html (I could swear that one of these appeared in BeOS' NetPositive browser if you visited a site without network access... but now I'm not so sure.) Edit: now I'm sure: https://8325.org/haiku/

I find this one hilarious, and rather relevant to this thread:

"Errors have occurred.

We won't tell you where or why.

Lazy programmers."

Thank you for sharing them :)

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#235

Post by schoen »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #230
schoen wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a participle rather than a gerund. Present participles and gerunds have the same form in English, but not in all languages that have these.

Indeed - in German, verbs have: - a gerund form which is always the same as the infinitive, - a different gerund form (verb-'ung', kind of cognate to verb-'ing', both derived from a Latin construct I believe), and - a present participle ...in addition to the other declensions. It's fascinating to me how Dutch and English can be seen as two parallel derivatives of the old High German language, where as what we now cal…

I don't know enough German to be sure of a rule about when the -ung form does and doesn't occur, but I can think of verbs that don't have it (confirmed with grep!), so it's not completely productive. (First examples offhand: essen, haben, denken, gehen, although the latter does seem to do -ung with some prefixes.)

It's also interesting to think of how to describe the semantic difference between the -en and -ung nouns when both do exist. I think one case is that the -ung can often describe the result of completing the action of the verb or in some sense refer to a "complete instance" or "complete occasion" of the verb's action, but this is generalizing from just a few examples...

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#236

Post by charles_f »

Tangential - one thing I particularly despise is trying to be funny when an unexpected error occurs. A la "oops, something went wrong", "Sowwwy, an error occurred!". Especially when this is breaking my flow, I'm not in a mood for cutesy messages and fun.

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#237

Post by spiffytech »

NiteOwl066 wrote: post #84
8organicbits wrote: post #43

I suspect there are cultural preferences here, there's no reason to believe there's one correct answer for all of humanity. I'm from the US but I've traveled to places where it's considered rude to say "no" directly and apologies aren't common. Like when trying to order an unavailable item from a menu: - I'd like the beef burger - The chicken burger is very good - That's OK, can I have the beef burger? - Our hot dogs…

Out of interest what places are those?

If this is a fun question for you, the book The Culture Map covers a lot of differences in how different cultures communicate, set expectations, express disagreement and displeasure, etc.

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#238

Post by bitwize »

bitwize wrote: post #155
TeMPOraL wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally said that Windows is a service on one of the Windows 10 splash screens during installation/update.

Yeah. One of their mandatory update dialogs. "Windows is a service, and updates help us provide that service smoothly, so if you could reboot for updates, say, now, that would be terrific." Not an exact quote but it captures the spirit.

Actual dialog here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/weve-g...

Love the proposed solution. And yet Linux will never be ready for the desktop because you need the command line to fix problems...

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#239

Post by lolinder »

buttercraft wrote: post #163
jodrellblank wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the discussion "This seems to be part of a broader, ongoing software infantilization process. Colors can't be sober either, everything has to be colorful, cheerful." What kind of shallow charicature of a tough guy do you have to be that seeing colours makes you feel like a baby and that cheerful is a bad thing , something to be stopped? > " Besides the obvious inappropriateness " Obvious?? All tools should be mo…

That is a very uncharitable interpretation of that comment. Nowhere did they state that seeing colors makes them feel like a baby. Nor did they say everything should be monochrome. Is it so surprising that people expect tools they use for business to look and act professionally?

> Nowhere did they state that seeing colors makes them feel like a baby.

Actually, that was a pretty reasonable translation of this line into low-brow speech:

> a broader, ongoing software infantilization process. Colors can't be sober either, everything has to be colorful, cheerful

The connection between these sentences is fairly clear: software is being infantilized and part of that is that everything has to be colorful and cheerful. Hence OP's translation into "seeing colours makes you feel like a baby and cheerful is a bad thing".

The translation into more casual language was rhetorically valuable in that it accentuated their broader point about how stuffy the original author sounds.

(And yes, I'm intentionally using stuffy language here because the casual language OP used seems to have whooshed.)

Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)

#240

Post by ryanisnan »

hbn wrote: post #109
rogual wrote: post #66

I don't even like "We" in UI messages. "We couldn't find that site." "We're just updating your computer." Perhaps I'm just an old fogey, but passive voice feels like the only right choice: "The site could not be found." "Your computer is being updated." The insertion of "We" feels like an imposition; the company who wrote the code reaching in and enacting their will with your equipment, using your screen as their soa…

I blame Google for popularizing that. Honestly it was fine enough for a YouTube error, "we couldn't find that video." But then everyone started copying it, including Microsoft who, in Windows 8, updated the blue screen of death to have a "whoopsie poopsie! Your computer has a widdle boo boo!" type message, accented with a :( sad face emoticon. Which I can guarantee was presented to countless people who lost real work…

You know, if my computer said “whoopsie poopsie! Your computer has a widdle boo boo!” I would be amused.
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