On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 20:44:40 +0600 (LKT) Kalum Somaratna aka Grendel wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, The awesome and feared Dave C. commented thusly,
(...)
> Well the computer maybe a tool but please don't forget that it interacts
> with humans and *not* robots. The dull and lifeless error messages you
> suggest would be good if the user was a robot.
Personaly I prefer the concise message than the chatty one. Especially
lusers tend to drop error messages of any kind that are more than a few
words long.
> But say after composing your 1000 word message and all of a sudden the
> program GPF's and all your work was lost and you were fuming, wouldn't it
> drive you off your nut if the system just says "GPF program terminated",
> without a more detailed kind message.
I don't think that this is relevant in the present discussion.
>> > 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.
> OK..what is this mysterious mail delivery software, there is *abosolutely*
> nothing to say that this was created by Exim, and not sendmail etc.
Frankly, from a (l)user point of view, who cares? I think every
reasonably competent postmaster or sysadmin can grab this info from
the more techincal part of the message that comes after. lusers
don't even know what sendmail or qmail or whatever _is_.
I'm quite happy with the standard Exim error message.
>> 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
> Wrong pal, the qmail message is more clearer, it says that is a *permanent
> error*, the above Exim message doesn't say so. Well according to your
> logistics there would be many users who would assume that the MTA will
> keep on trying to deliver and that they don't have to check the address
> etc.
This is up to personal interpretation, and this implies vastly
different views and may involves other fields such as linguistics,
semantics (mhh, I'm not sure if these terms are correct, as I'm
neither a language specialist nor a native English speaker). But
you get the point.
(...)
>> one will jump off the screen, and force themselves into a persons brain
>> - they have to OPEN THEIR EYES and READ IT.
> Many users do so my friend. It's that IMHO when comparing the above two
Unfortunately, my own experience dealing with lusers tell me quite
the opposite. Some users do indeed read and try to understand error
messages, but most don't, sadly.
Just my 2 pennies.
Bernard Stern, SWITCH
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