A proper apology, to me, is the admission of a fault that the apologiser is able to, and will, rectify next time. Therefore most error-message-apologies sound very insincere to me. I prefer computers to stay curt, true to their nature.
Should error messages apologize? (2013)
51–60 of 262 posts
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#52| Sorry, you do not have permission to access this feature. Please contact your administrator for assistance.
What is the feature? What permission do I need? Who is my administrator? How do I contact them?
These are the more important points to assist the user with then adding a "sorry".
I'd argue that this should be a button with 'request read access to FooViz from your administrator' that facilitates the corrective action on the users behalf. Similar to clicking on a Google docs link that you don't have access to.
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#53> it would be more appropriate to "apologize" for something that would be considered solely the "fault" of the application Is this in part a US vs English difference? I used to work with somebody from Texas who was confused and irritated by the english use of 'sorry' for things they weren't responsible for. In english I suppose we use it out of politeness to express some sympathy, rather than necessarily as an apolog…
As an English person my first instinct is to add "sorry" to virtually any user-facing text!
“Sorry, you have a match!”
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#54I've been working in what might be called "UX" for some time, although mostly in technical and scientific environments, which are quite different compared to the garden variety consumer applications designed for retention and profit, and I wouldn't want to be thrown into the same pot as the usability crowd with their 90% business of self important shit that's just useless dribble for the incompetent middle management caste. The whole UX specialty can be summarized perfectly by the linked uxmag.com article which disqualifies itself automatically by having the most annoying, anti-usability "AI" bullshit modal over the article that's pathetically begging for the attention of gullible morons - of which there are plenty in UX, of course. It's a bullshit-job profession, and it shows. In reality you can boil down most questions of usability to using simple heuristics: Who are you dealing with and what's the useful interaction in this context? E.g. the useful interaction with UX people in any context is to let them know how little worth their professions actually has.
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on the message, but a "Sorry" can set the right tone so a user doesn't feel "yelled at". Omitting the pleasantry might make things seem too terse. Sorry, your e-mail failed to send. Your e-mail failed to send. I much prefer the first one. Software intended for typical end users should have a respectful tone and avoid sounding like it's blaming the user. On the other hand, something like strerror()'s output…
Both these error messages fail the "where do we go from here?" test - disrespecting the user with requiring open ended work on their part. Having some breadcrumbs to get back to the right track is much more valuable than flowery wordings. Eg: Message too large - failed to send email. Network unavailable - failed to send email. Subscription expired - failed to send email. Unexpected service outage - https://email.io/s…
The details of the error weren't the point of my example. And being that terse sounds like you're barking orders at the user. Once again, shortness is fine for programmer communication, but personally for an end user just going about their day I would avoid such an impertinent tone.
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#56What about "It seems you do not have permission" or "It appears ...". Other option is "Unfortunately you do not..."
They are like in the middle between formal and informal, or maybe I feel that way because in not native English.
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
But we can't identify which human wrote the message. There's a huge difference between a push notification that says: > Flight UA569 has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience and we will rebook you on the next available flight. and one that says: > Flight UA569 has been canceled. I apologize for the inconvenience and I will rebook you on the next available flight. — Alice
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Yes, there is a difference in the two examples you gave, although it would have been nice if you had been more specific about what you meant. What I notice is that the first option the apology comes from the company and the people in it, and intended to imply they see it as their responsibility to fix things. The second would imply that Alice is personally to blame for the can…
> I'm not sure what you are trying to say.
Your remark was "The app didn't write the error message, the people implementing the app did". I responded by saying that you can't tell who the human is.
> it would have been nice if you had been more specific about what you meant
It's the very first sentence: you can't identify the human. I showed an example of why it's different when you can tell that there is a human involved working with you specifically.
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#58> it would be more appropriate to "apologize" for something that would be considered solely the "fault" of the application Is this in part a US vs English difference? I used to work with somebody from Texas who was confused and irritated by the english use of 'sorry' for things they weren't responsible for. In english I suppose we use it out of politeness to express some sympathy, rather than necessarily as an apolog…
> I used to work with somebody from Texas who was confused and irritated by the english use of 'sorry' for things they weren't responsible for.
Funerals must be bewildering for them. How do they phrase "I'm sorry for your loss"?
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#59I think prefixing with "sorry," is a good idea but I really hate cutesy error messages. I feel the Chrome dinosaur kicked those off, and I do (did?) like the dino. But "it's not you, it's us" is very annoying. "We made a booboo UwU". When something has gone wrong I really don't want to feel I'm being marketed to, I just want information!
One of the worst - I don't know if it's still there - was a Gmail message something like "Hooray! Your inbox is empty." Well that's great if you worship Inbox Zero. But what about me? Maybe I'm anxiously waiting for news on a family member's illness and hospitalization. Maybe I'm waiting for my lawyer to get back to me on an important case. It's not hard to imagine any number of circumstances where I would not say "h…
hooray! your sysadmin botched the migration and your mail is all gone!
Re: Should error messages apologize? (2013)
#60I think, error messages should put way more focus on what can be done to make it work - rather than on what went wrong. The user wants to achieve something, and the general job of the software is to help the user achieve their goal. If the goal of the user is to book a flight - then the software throwing an error about the request form not being filled out correctly, basically constitutes a bureaucratic hurdle. "You…
I try to do this when writing error messages I expect to be seen by other engineers. I also try to state why this is an error condition.
“ERROR: Database query returned 0 rows”
versus
“ERROR: Database query returned 0 rows but need 2 or more rows for this operation. Ensure $other_etl has successfully ingested the data.”