On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Kalum Somaratna aka Grendel wrote:
[excerpts thereof]
> > > This would not happen if it is made clear that the sender is *not* a
> > > human, Ie: a line like "as sincerely as software could be" will make
> > > things very clear to the recepient that this is *not* a human..
> >
> > Muahahahaaaaaa ..... *rotfl*
>
> ?? Whats there to laugh at ;)
Whats funny, I beleive, is that somehow changing the text in that
manner is going to increase the odds that sonmeone receiving it will
open their eyes and actually read it, and actually think about what it
says, even for a fraction of a second.
> Fr ex: My solution for the above would be to, for every person that posts
> to MAILER_DAEMON, automatically send him a prewritten explicit letter
> explaining that this is not the address of a human and that mail sent to
> this address is not and never will be read, and a few lines about the
> futility of sending mail to the addy.
Which stands a good chance of being promptly deleted without ever being
read. You can lead a person to information, but you cannot make them
absorb it.
> By this simple step you not only enlighten your users (they are highly
> unlikely to make the same mistake again) but you solve your problem with
> virtually no sweat at all.....
>
> > 0.001% of several tens of millions of people, is still a lot of people
> > with the ability to directly send you email, from all over the world.
> > And this doesn't even account for the people for whom English is not a
> > first language, and who don't understand the word 'sincerely' or the
> > 'could be' clause.
>
> Obviousy I see that you must be enjoying the arcane syntax of many things
> and don't have user friendliness as your priority...
The average person is too used to not having to *THINK*, and Windows
only helps to spread the cluelessness by removing the ability to think
cogently about what they are doing as a requirement for using
technology. Some may think this is a good thing - I think it is a
terrible waste. Consider how far more popular java 'chat' rooms are
than mailing lists anymore (which seem to be more popular among the
spammers - amazingly, the more professional spammers are more smarter
than the average user - abusive and offensive of course, but still
smarter) - mailing lists force you to read messages sometimes
consisting of more than one sentence (or fragment) at a time, sometimes
even (gasp!) entire *paragraphs* of communication at once. Much easier
to just logon to chat.yahoo.com and take turns typing "hey hi!
:::--)))" "LOL" and "U R M OR F?". I despise most web-based chat rooms.
At least IRC/MUDS require you to run a program that isn't installed on
your computer by default, and actually take a conscious effort to
connect to a server that more than just 'click on the shiny thing' -
that alone weeds out the most clueless folk.
> Just see the difference between "Update your program version" and
> "please update your program version", it makes things much more
> easier to the user especially when you are fuming..
>
> Just see why many people like windoze, it's because of it's user friendly
> attitude.
>
> I have been developing software for some time and I find that if a app has
> kind and has informative error messages and is user friendly, people will
> continue to come back to use it...
Informative, yes. I fail to see the point of 'kind'. Now, I dont
advocate outrightly hostile messages either - error messages should be
specific and to the point, and contain any details necesarry - but why
should they waste space and time trying to pretend the computer is your
best friend - its a tool, nothing more.
> > More chatty bounce messages are a bad idea. The only things I'd
> > consider changing the bounce message for are:
> > * in a country where English is not the native language, put a
> > translation first (and leave the English in below as a common
> > language for mails from abroad)
> > * adding in an extra line beforehand, something like:
> > '*** MACHINE-GENERATED MAIL INDICATING A PROBLEM ***'
>
>
> i. This is the qmail-send program at web.lu. I'm afraid I wasn't able
> to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent
> error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
>
> In the above "chatty" messsage generated by the qmail program, it clearly
> says "This is the qmail-send **program**"
"This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. The following address(es) failed:"
Why is this any less clearer? The answer is that it isnt - but neither
one will jump off the screen, and force themselves into a persons brain
- they have to OPEN THEIR EYES and READ IT.
>
> If the user is unable to understand something as elementary that a program
> is something not human, then there really is nothing for you to do..even a
> non chatty message will get replied to..you mean to say that then he can
> understand that "MACHINE-GENERATED MAIL" is not from a human...
That is the entire point.
> >
> > Designing a system designed to scale to more than 20 users and making
> > end-user competence a pre-requisite is perhaps not a good idea.
>
> What baffles me is that how do you get them to do something with your
> system if you don't expect a certain degree of competence from them...
>
> >Scaling
> > to more than 100 people and assuming intelligence above chimpanzee level
> > is foolhardy. Designing a system which should scale to the size of the
> > Internet population and _requiring_ the intelligence of a slug is going
> > to cause you serious grief if there's any way that error messages will
> > provide a way to contact you.
>
> Ohh....I see..so we don't provide any way that the user can get back at
> us...right....what a wonderful idea..LOL... :)
Why should some person in some remote location, need to contact the
sysadmins of a server which could not deliver their mail becuase they
mistyped the address, or got the wrong address - they should contact
their LOCAL systems/support/etc for that help. (If they truly need help
being able to correctly type an email address, or even they want to
jump up and down and insist its right when they are clearly incorrect)
> Yes lets send all the mail to root@localhost to /dev/null and be damned
> with them...:)
No, mail sent to root shouldnt be thrown away. Someone going to the
trouble to actually type that address in by hand probably has *some*
thought process going on, and is probably at least capabale of
communicating something useful.
> Well the problem is that say that you are serving millions of people and
> someone wants to contact you about something wrong with your services...he
> or she will have no way to do so and you won't be any wiser about your
> malfunctioning servers...
You are assuming that any significant percentage of underliverable
mails are likely to be due to a malfunctioning server, rather than a
user's malfunctioning fingers on the keyboard, and that if there really
is some malfunction, that someone should reply to mailer-daemon, rather
than sending to postmaster, and that that message will somehow got
through where a regular message did not..
Even better, if there really is a malfunction, that odds skyrocket that
one or two actually cluefull persons will notice, will be able to tell
the difference between a malfunction and their own error, and will
either mail to postmaster, or maybe use an out-of-band way to contact
the responsible party (assuming the highly possible chance that if an
email system is breaking, that email would be a poor choice of means to
communicate that information) and communicate some useful details about
the matter.
I would rather be contacted by one knowledgable person, who might even
be able to give me some useful details about a failure, than receiving
email everytime some newbi cant spell an email address right, or tries
to send email to a URL or a postal address.. (Now mind you, we are
willing to educate and inform _our_ users, and they have our toll-free
support number where we can do a much better job of than trying to
explain such things in an email that probably wont read - but it is not
our job to educate the entire Internet)
>
> Best Wishes,
> Grendel
Sigh.. I didn't really mean to make this into a rant. I just feel very
stronnly on this, and another discussion in another forum about
'dumbing down' an interface on a system I work on to reduce the amount
of thinking the user had to do had just set me off when I started..
-DJC
