12 ms·

Cut the cutesy errors

386 points by panic 4y ago

SilasX 4y ago
Yep. Found out a few months ago that Mozilla’s bug tracker still thinks it’s appropriate to report “zero (matching) bugs found” as “Zarro Boogs Found”: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374266 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374266
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  With a comical name like Mozilla, I think they have license to use comical error messages.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    That doesn’t follow at all. They still have an international community that needs technical information and shouldn’t be distracted or confused by oh-so-clever jokes when trying to solve errors and bugs. Firefox is intended as a daily utility for serious stuff, regardless of the name of the organization that makes it.
    - mmmpetrichor 4y ago
      The organization is ultimately a collection of developers who have devoted (In this case) 20+ years of their career. I can understand the utilitarian view, but I can also see how they want to keep some humor or personality alive in their product. It's ultimately the decision of the org. Open source stuff is hard enough, imagine seeing tons of demands daily on something you really care about and then seeing something like this that doesn't, ultimately, even matter. I can understand a tiny bit of hostility. I will add, don't take free software for granted, it doesn't owe you anything. I think the reverse is true.
      - SilasX 4y ago
        There are plenty of ways they can have humor that don’t compromise technical docs. You want to know how to ease the load of maintaining open source? Make onboarding easier. That means good, clear docs that aren’t cluttered with cryptic inside jokes. Seriously, the way they work, you’d almost think they don’t want people to get involved. (In Mozilla’s case, probably because they blew their budget on the latest resume builder.) It would be one thing if I were asking for a special feature of the product. Here, I’m asking for something that saves your support staff from being pestered by people that couldn’t understand the cryptic docs. Why wouldn’t you want that? [1] Why wouldn’t you be thanking anyone who suggests ways to save you time? Sometimes I wonder if noticing this kind of stuff is a superpower, because it’s in really short supply. [1] Maybe because you moonlight as an Optimism maintainer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30294065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30294065
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  As the bug notes, at this point in history it's unlikely this will be changed because it's been this way so long that tooling that works by screen-scraping a bugzilla output would break if "zarro" went away. https://github.com/search?p=3&q=zarro+boogs&type=Code https://github.com/search?p=3&q=zarro+boogs&type=Code At this point it's probably insufficiently confusing to justify the change. The most valuable piece of advice I ever got regarding error messages was "Here's what users do with an error message they don't understand: they Google it." As long as the key words are unambiguous in meaning it can actually be more harmful than beneficial to change a message like that (when people are trying to figure out why their bugzilla installs are showing zero bugs, will they lose all the accreted historical knowledge on StackOverflow for fixing "zarro boogs" issues if Mozilla changes the message?).
  - SilasX 4y ago
    Did you know that there are people born every day that haven't been indoctrinated into Mozilla's oh-so-clever inside jokes, and they might start using the software one day[1] -- or at least, that's what Mozilla claims to wait, their organization practices notwithstanding. If it's really important that the parser pick up the string "Zarro Boogs Found", then you can leave it in invisible text, and then leave the rest of the world out of your counterproductive in-joke. [1] But at this rate, that's becoming less likely.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      > Did you know that there are people born every day that haven't been indoctrinated into Mozilla's oh-so-clever inside jokes Probably yes. And when they see that error and have more questions about it, many will Google "Zarro Boogs" and find StackOverflow links and various other sources. If the text is changed or made invisible, that search pathway becomes obscured. As inconvenient as it is for making changes to published UI, unique and identifiable strings serve as a sort of "soft URL" in this era of ubiquitous search engines.
      - SilasX 4y ago
        >Probably yes. And when they see that error and have more questions about it, many will Google "Zarro Boogs" and find StackOverflow links and various other sources. The point of a help resource is that you avoid, where at all possible, making the user need other help resources. >If the text is changed or made invisible, that search pathway becomes obscured. That's not how text search works. >As inconvenient as it is for making changes to published UI, unique and identifiable strings serve as a sort of "soft URL" in this era of ubiquitous search engines. So do you think maybe there's a lesson in here about building a culture around being opaque to outsiders? Or do you take it as an indicator to be more opaque, lest we alienate those who like scaring off the users that the project exists to help?
hprotagonist 4y ago
My favorite bugzilla text: zarro boogs found
jcpst 4y ago
I really wish more devs would treat errors as first class, the same level of importance as a success response. We had an error page at a previous job that had an <h1> OOPS!. Not sure who made it, but they didn’t think much of it, and a lot of users really didn’t like it.
- titzer 4y ago
  This is why I have grown to hate expressing errors as exceptions. Nowadays, I handle errors one of two ways: it's either part of the return value of the function (i.e. an error state, usually a case of a variant), or the caller passes an error handler object, with the default behavior is the error handler records a list of things that went wrong. Threading the error handler through generally isn't too bad; then you can check it whereever you want and handle it at the top level. It's almost impossible to swallow an error unless you create a new error handler object and throw it away, which would be a very rude thing to do. This works especially well for parsing data, as you can write most of the parser completely oblivious of previous errors and keep on truckin'. The top-level parse routine will surface the first lexicographical error. The code is very clean but still gives really good error messages (and multiple! I used this for the Virgil parser and entire compiler).
- mmmpetrichor 4y ago
  Let's make a distinction between errors delivered to users buying a train ticket on an app (as in the original article) and errors meant for developers. It feels like hardly anyone in the thread is making that distinction.
foofoo55 4y ago
In a similar vein, I quite dislike Microsoft's personification of Windows in the messages such as "We couldn't log in ...", "Let's finish setting up ..." or "We are adding new features ..."
- rogual 4y ago
  To me it shows Microsoft's attitude that Windows is a little tunnel into your house through which they can act. The computer isn't doing a thing. The user isn't doing a thing. The vendor is doing the thing, using the equipment they've got in your home.
Jugurtha 4y ago
It is unproductive when the message politely wrong - or wrongly polite. Example: "It's not you, it's us" when I know for a fact that it is a network error on my side because it's of my own doing..
mmmpetrichor 4y ago
Lighten up people! I actually find it kind of funny how OP was filled with rage by a cutsey error message. I hope they can laugh in hindsight about how this triggered them to make a serious blog post.
needle0 4y ago
Elaborately worded error messages are also hostile against users who are not native speakers of the application's UI language. They're already spending extra mental effort just using the software as-is; while native speakers may find a cutesy error message and just go "Huh", non-natives may not even understand that it's an error at all, wasting time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nopcode 4y ago
While we’re at it, can we do the same for loading screens? I’d like to know my DNS is hanging rather than something completely made up, Discord.
- mysterydip 4y ago
  "App hung at 'zapping the flibber flabbers', please help"
- BitterAmethyst 4y ago
  At least they removed the atrocious "links are spoopy" line when you click a hyperlink
pigbearpig 4y ago
Yeesh, so many comments here take things so seriously. It’s like gallows humor, errors suck so why not add a little levity.
twobitshifter 4y ago
I couldn’t believe the first time I saw the sad smiley blue screen. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing for Microsoft to have done. Then I remembered fiddling on Macs as a kid, if you screwed up you’d see a bomb. If you did something really wrong you’d get the mac icon with Xs for eyes. The point being: cutesy errors are about as old as personal computing, but they do seem to becoming more prevalent.
- mysterydip 4y ago
  Came here to say the same. The problem is they seem to be hiding information (for some reason): Instead of being able to search "errornumber appname", you're stuck with a pastel picture of some cartoon character shrugging and text of "whoops! something happened. why don't you try restarting?"
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Instead of being able to search "errornumber appname", you're stuck with a pastel picture of some cartoon character shrugging and text of "whoops! something happened. why don't you try restarting?" Are you referring to Teams, by any chance? I don't mind them being artsy, but if that's a replacement for the actual detailed error message, it both makes the user and the people trying to help helpless. Imagine helping someone over the phone or in person; e.g. if you can see "error 10060", you know instantly that it's a network connection problem. If it's an access violation ("illegal operation" was unfortunate but still far more informative terminology) or a c0000005, the application probably messed itself up. You can ask people to read you error codes or search them yourself (being sure to quote them --- the horrible vagueness of search engines is another rant I won't get into here, although it also adds to the problem...). If all the application says is "something wrong", no one can help. All but the extremely perceptive could as a result be easily mislead into reinstalling the application, reinstalling the OS, and all manner of other stupidly destructive and ultimately futile actions, only to find out that the problem was ultimately due to something else entirely.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > Came here to say the same. The problem is they seem to be hiding information (for some reason): Back when I worked at a computer shop I've had customers come to the shop with a hand-written report of the Windows XP BSOD message; like, all of this.[1] They were always very nice people by the way. Also, all the text is boilerplate and 100% irrelevant to the actual error (UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME). It's not going to be fixed by a Windows update (which you can't install since you can't boot the thing) or disabling "caching" BIOS options. Not showing any text instead of that is probably better. It wouldn't be too hard to make a error message → useful description map for common problems like this, but good error messages/help was never Windows' strong point... [1]: https://neosmart.net/wiki/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08/unmountable-boot-volume.png https://neosmart.net/wiki/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08...
ddejohn 4y ago
oopsie woopsie! https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594 https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594 edit: I always thought this tweet was hilarious. I'm definitely not a furry though, looking through OP's tweets now that I've linked one of theirs...
- lmm 4y ago
  If you feel the need to tell everyone about how non-furry you are just because you linked someone's tweet, you're probably not as secure in your non-furriness as you want to claim.
  - strken 4y ago
    I think the intent of the edit is to warn anyone who clicks the link that they're one more click away from furry porn, possibly on their work computer.
    - bunbunbun 4y ago
      Then they could added a warning that commented on the nsfw aspect and not on their own non-furriness.
    - _Algernon_ 4y ago
      You'd accomplish that by appending "(NSFW)". Anything more complicated than that signals insecurity.
  - mpalmer 4y ago
    Hmm. When the thread knows literally one fact about you, and it's that you had a link to a furry art twitter account at the ready, you can be forgiven for doing a little brand management.
  - xxxxyxxyxxyxyx 4y ago
    Are there studies that link announcement of not being X, with actually being X? I always thought that line of reasoning is ridiculous. It also uses X as being a 'gotcha', which seems similar to using X as an insult. I mean you don't 'get people' with things they are fine with admitting. Maybe not an insult exactly but it definitely feels like an attack. I'm sure there are people who, being ashamed of being something, do go out of their way to say that they aren't. However I don't think seeing someone saying it once mean they "probably" are that thing. You can be annoyed/embarrassed at the thought of being seen as something you aren't. I don't know the type of people who follow NSFW furry artists on twitter, but I imagine a lot of them are furries themselves. If the OP doesn't want to be associated with them then I think it's reasonable to state he isn't one.
blacksmith_tb 4y ago
Hmm, I don't think the problem is cuteness or lack thereof, it's the lack of either a suggested fix ("sign back in" or "try restarting" etc.) or even some kind of cryptic id you could report to Customer Service - "why am I getting a #4747 error trying to complete my transaction!?"
- munk-a 4y ago
  The cryptic IDs can be rather nice - if I throw "ERROR YCOMB-143" at least it's pretty likely you can google an answer... but if you're able to deliver such a distinct error state to the user can't you save a step and include a message about how to resolve the error state (i.e. "ERROR YCOMB-143 Your account is too young to down vote comments")
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Cryptic IDs are indispensable for support, because you can't expect the support staff (or the dev who's ultimately going to be handling the bug) to know all the languages the app was localized into. Without IDs, it can be real fun trying to figure out what's wrong from, say, a screenshot of the Chinese version of the app.
rschachte 4y ago
- draw_down 4y ago
- dspillett 4y ago
  If the system you are having trouble with is important to your work or otherwise essential, being a bit antsy about the matter is perfectly understandable IMO.
  - rschachte 4y ago
    “Oopsies, I can’t find what you’re looking for” with a 404 in the response header versus “404 not found” with a 404 in the response header seems pretty reasonable to me. If they deviate from standards, sure.
PainfullyNormal 4y ago
I like the cutesy errors. It makes it marginally less likely that I will put my fist through my computer monitor. Those things get expensive after a while.
- batch12 4y ago
  Interesting how people differ so much. These make me far more likely to have to purchase a new monitor or mouse..
  - PainfullyNormal 4y ago
    > Interesting how people differ so much. Life would be rather dull otherwise.
- anon_cow1111 4y ago
  I miss CRT monitors for exactly this reason, they at least offer some resistance...
slaymaker1907 4y ago
I’ve seen far worse errors. In practice, I think writing good error messages is very difficult for system (or unexpected) errors because you often don’t know the context of what the program was doing before the error happened. Stack traces help approximate this context, but they are imperfect because they are a point in time. The solution to this problem is really good logging, but that is almost always hidden away from users. I’m fine with whimsy, but don’t treat your users like babies by hiding away all diagnostic information like logs.
shawnz 4y ago
OP makes a reasonable argument about why error messages should be constructed the way they prefer, but is it actually backed up by usability testing? Maybe the cutesy errors really do have a subconscious positive effect which is being overlooked here?
- wowokay 4y ago
  Agreed. And while I’m sure we have all been let down by apps/tech at one point or another, I think the user in this case discounts the tremendous effort put into developing apps, and to me a somewhat “cutesy” error message is enough to remind me that a human created the very opportunity I feel let down by.
- pseudalopex 4y ago
  Were cutesy errors backed up by usability testing?
  - shawnz 4y ago
    If not then that just means that both this counterargument against cutesy errors as well as the original rationale to have them in the first place are both equally weak. That's not a point in favour of this argument.
    - pseudalopex 4y ago
      Points in favor of this argument can be found in other comments.
      - shawnz 4y ago
        OK, sure, but what does that have to do with what I'm saying about usability testing being important to validate your hypotheses?
- Rastonbury 4y ago
  I started a reply thinking this is probably absurd to do, but I realise it's probably possible. A/B test error messages, outcome are support tickets, app reviews. That's said I'm not sure if anyone would bother to setup tests for error messages, there probably more important things to do like fix the actual cause
munk-a 4y ago
I think this article is great but it buries the lede. The cutesy errors are indeed bad but more important is being informative about what actually went wrong and how to resolve it. A while ago I introduced a new error class hierarchy at <JOB> which introduced three distinct families of errors - one that was considered a user error (that would be thrown in response to some action that we can predict happening but not totally prevent), one that is considered to have a user friendly message but be generally unexpected, and anything else. If you try and insert something invalid into the DB you'll get a user unfriendly message - if, within the calling function, you know why your call to the DB would fail with a key collision (for instance) you can create a new chained exception off the original and rethrow with a human readable message - when it hits the top level of execution (assuming nothing catches it) then the error printing logic will iterate through the full chain and print everything human readable and dump the full traces of any errors not marked as user side. This lets us quickly triage new errors (since known user errors are kept out of the main error log) and presents an easy way to convert logged errors to unlogged ones when we've determined the source of the issue (assuming it's an exception we're comfortable with - a lot of our "user" errors are server-side validation that should be prevented by client-side code). It also forces any errors that we haven't specifically marked as human-readable to render as "Internal Server Error" which we hate along with supplying an easy route to provide a more meaningful error message. I never, in my life, want to read an error message that starts with "GuzzleHttp encountered a malformed response from aws. ..." nor do I ever want to see "[SQL1002] The newly inserted row would violate constraint widgets_name_key" - write good errors.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  This was a twitter thread, so not too surprising, but the concluding tweet went there too: "Good error messages explain what’s gone wrong, and give clear instructions for what to do next – and being cutesy rarely helps." and there's a link to https://alexwlchan.net/2020/10/the-importance-of-good-error-messages https://alexwlchan.net/2020/10/the-importance-of-good-error-... as the dedicated writeup (also from tweets) for that specific point.
- snapdaddy 4y ago
  I disagree with nearly every response in this thread (not yours). The 'cutesy' error messages are step 1 to providing a better user experience. 'This is awkward! Something went wrong and it's probably our fault :-(' is much better for users than 'Unexpected error occurred in logTicketResponse' And no, it isn't sufficient, but it is better. Providing useful error messages is really hard (and it sounds like your application does a good job of it), and we as software developers are not very good at it. For everyone who complains about the cutesy error messages, how much time are you spending in your own code to provide useful error messages that explain the problem and suggest resolutions?
bryanlarsen 4y ago
The failure mode of clever is asshole - John Scalzi
dspillett 4y ago
> “Token not provided in guest headers.” I have no idea what this means, or what I can do about it. At least this example gives you something that you can report to support of you do contact someone about the issue. It if you are a bit techie you might be able to judge for yourself if trying again is worth it or a waste of time. Many issues don't even give you that much.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  My all-time favorite: > "MySQL server has gone away" Gone away? You mean like it packed its bags and hopped aboard a train to another town? Surely you're not trying to say that the connection timed out or anything more specific.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    I kinda wonder why that was never fixed/improved. Too many error handling dependent on that specific message maybe.
    - manwe150 4y ago
      Maybe because ‘gone away’ is the best it can know without a full network diagnostic? Else why is the connection timed out: did it do something wrong and get punished? Or did I wait too long to get a reply, or perhaps I was online too long today, or are you saying it is shareware, and I need to reset the trial clock? xD
  - gtowey 4y ago
    In this case it might be hard to improve. It's a message generated by the client which means that it was expecting something from the server and instead the connection was terminated. It's a sign that something has gone wrong on the server side, but it's impossible for the client to know what that is. Especially because most of the time MySQL connections are each a thread and there may be time between when something server side terminated the thread and when the client tries to talk to the server again. It's better for the server to release all the resources immediately instead of waiting for the client so it can return a more helpful error message.
donkarma 4y ago
it's not a cutesy error. it cuts the bullshit and tells you what went wrong right in the body
- tjmc 4y ago
  It tells the developer what went wrong. It tells the customer nothing.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Which is better than not telling either. At least with this one, a technically-minded customer can sometimes infer the meaning of the developer-focused message.
bityard 4y ago
I have a problem with software that tries harder to be "cute" than useful, but that's a rant for a different day... I think the issue with error messages like these aren't so much that they are cute, it's that while the developer thinks they are being clever somehow, these kinds of messages usually come off as patronizing or condescending to the user, especially when the user DOES have the technical skill to know what's actually wrong.
RajT88 4y ago
Maybe "Guru Meditation" would be better? At least it contains the suggestion of being more serene about the whole affair.
SLWW 4y ago
> This post was adapted from a thread on Twitter. Lot of words to express frustration when a Tweet with an image attachment could convey the same. "Well this is awkward" is just the "header" for any error you may experience during the process with that application, and is the same thing that Mozilla does (essentially) when the browser crashes.
UmYeahNo 4y ago
Could not agree more. At least it better than "Something went wrong. Try again later." That drives me berserk.
- krisoft 4y ago
  Ok, so what do you prefer then? I mean other than bug-free code of course.
  - kweingar 4y ago
    A brief description of the error, an error code, and (depending on context) instructions on how to get help is much nicer than “something went wrong.” Even something simple like “the request timed out” helps the user troubleshoot and rules out entire classes of errors
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
_8j50 4y ago
I like the cuteness it helps not take things too seriously and focus on the problem. Things failed and you broke the internet for everyone on the planet but there is no time to panic only to focus and get things done.
5cott0 4y ago
and if you are going to insist on printf debugging please stop spamming emojis
mrandish 4y ago
My biggest frustration is long error numbers which can't be selected for copy/paste. Worse yet is web addresses as text instead of being clickable links.
Lammy 4y ago
Firefox has one of these when a tab process crashes: "Gah. Your tab just crashed." https://user-media-prod-cdn.itsre-sumo.mozilla.net/uploads/images/2017-08-11-05-57-08-275c74.png https://user-media-prod-cdn.itsre-sumo.mozilla.net/uploads/i... I really hate the way the "Gah" wording feigns shock, as if Mozilla are also inconvenienced alongside me. Then the meat of the error implies I am at fault. It's my tab that crashed, and I caused it to happen by doing whatever I did on whatever page I was choosing to visit. Any blame is deflected away from Firefox itself. Then it makes me feel doubly bad because I immediately realize I'm getting upset at something incredibly trivial, but man it annoys me!!
- routerl 4y ago
  Yeah, I think there are two approaches to any text a user sees in your app: is it copy, or is it data? The file/edit/etc menus are data. Concise, clear errors are data. "Gah. Your tab just crashed" is copy.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  I don't get shock from "Gah." I get embarrassment and disappointment, which seems appropriate for the situation. Firefox is ashamed that it screwed up. Then again, I'm from the age when the internet was still fun, and everything didn't have to be corporate, uniform, serious, and boring.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    All the fun will be sucked out of software development one mildly offended HNer at a time.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      I don't inherently mind fun, but error messages being fun/cutesy is not the time.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Doing things that are kind of funny for the developers, and then ordinary users have wildly varying opinions of... isn't so great.
zht 4y ago
one simple pet peeve of mine is when websites use the word "simply" in their help articles. it is annoying because I am likely reading the page because I am running into issues so I am already frustrated. "simply" implies that the issue that I have is so simple to fix and that I'm stupid for not knowing how to do this simple thing however, most of the time there is some backend or unexpected error and their "simply" advice just doesn't work. I hate it
- MandieD 4y ago
  That should be one of the top commandments of tech writing: Thou shalt not use the word "simply", because you are either insulting users or leaving something important out. Or both.
prvc 4y ago
Siri is the worst with this, but instead of "cutesy", when it's failing to execute a simple command, it goes for a smarmy and sarcastic response. I'll never understand the mindset of the putative audience who its designers think this will please.
- TillE 4y ago
  Siri used to randomly give cutesy responses when I asked it to set a timer instead of repeating the time back to me, which I found incredibly annoying. Fortunately they stopped doing that a couple years ago.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Siri has degraded so much for me that I suspect a sarcastic response is now beyond its abilities.
  - throwaway284534 4y ago
    Apple has definitely softened up Siri’s demeanor over the years, and I think it was a deliberate decision to introduce her as standoffish. I once read that waitresses who initially come off as rude earn higher tips, but only if their mood softens throughout the meal. There seems to be something about “winning” the waitstaff over that makes diners reward them with higher tips. IMO, it was a feature to have Siri come off as rude when her abilities and comprehension were still in development.
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    If asked the answer to zero divided by zero, she used to say a whole paragraph joke about how you’re sharing your zero cookies with zero friends because you have no friends. There’s videos on YouTube; I thought it was funny. They changed that a few months ago to something more “tame”, but still millennial/zoomer humor.
    - prvc 4y ago
      Today, in response to the query, "What is zero divided by zero?", Siri still gives a flip explanation (but now omitting the reference to Sesame Street intellectual property), followed by the one word sentence "No.". And that's when it's working as intended. Astounding.
trynewideas 4y ago
From a support perspective, this kind of error immediately puts customers in a bad mood. If you/your company uses cute errors, ask your support team what they think about them. If they're cool with it, they're probably not a problem.
sowbug 4y ago
Some more rants: 1. Tell me accurately whether trying again will accomplish anything. Don't say "try again in a few moments" if the error is essentially fatal. Your summer intern's flaky microservice can't keep up? Then sure, go ahead and tell me to roll the dice and hope to get luckier on the next submit. But if my session has expired, don't keep showing me the button that you know requires a valid session to succeed. 2. Similarly, if I need to do something differently to succeed, then tell me what to do. Don't just say "Sorry, try again." If it's my auth error, then tell me to try different credentials. If it's your transient error, then tell me so. Don't make me play 20 Questions with your form submission flow. (Yes, there can be security reasons why you don't want to reveal exactly what's wrong with a bad request. You can still provide a better experience than Human Binary Search.) 3. Are you seriously going to make me press this button again and again for the next 10 minutes? Isn't repetitive activity exactly what computers are for? Sure, there's the risk of your clients DDOSing your server when something goes wrong. But that's what exponential and/or randomized backoff is for. It's insulting to distill your entire UX down to the world's worst CAPTCHA in the form of a single "press me again for an unknown number of times" button. Press it for me, and tell me when you did what I asked! 4. I'm looking at you, every smart speaker ever. "Sorry, Spotify couldn't fulfill that request." OK, but do you think that means that I changed my mind about wanting to hear the song? I feel a special kind of rage knowing my Alexa history has five consecutive "Alexa, play Dolly Parton Here You Come Again" requests, spoken increasingly stridently each time. It's like Rant #3 but making me write out the request in crayon rather than press a button. If you're actually an assistant, then assist me by hiding Spotify's endless spurious errors from me and taking care of them. Don't make me fill the 60 seconds of silence by shouting louder and louder at you. Tell me "I'm sorry, Spotify is having trouble with your request. I'm still working on it." Then play the damn song.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I don't think most of these are realistic. In most error modalities, you simply won't know whether trying again is the right medicine (and if you do, you'd most likely not see an error message). The error may be anything from a cosmic ray to a bad release to an OVHcloud-class datacenter fire, from a software POV you really can't tell.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
This is just an ask to be empathetic. When you have a gaming chat app, you can say "uwu we made a little ewwor" and it's not a big deal. On the other hand, you don't want your health insurance app to say "owie! we need a bandaid" when they can't load a list of in-network hospitals. There's a time and a place for fun. Software doesn't have to be boring, but some of it should be.
reggieband 4y ago
It's such a tiny thing, but my pet peeve is exclamation marks in error messages. "Something went wrong!" is something I see a lot of engineers do. I don't usually call it out but it bugs me whenever I see it.
CornCobs 4y ago
I actually from a less technical person's perspective, "cute" error messages humanize errors, showing them that there was indeed someone who made that page they are currently on and not just some soulless computer and thus making solving the problem much more approachable! Example 1: Chrome's dino page is actually great! Grandma doesn't fear it or call me out of panic the moment she sees it. Imagine if she got something like the default Apache 500 error webpage. Example 2: the new BSOD. I saw on some other thread that some people hate it, but I think it's clear and directs the inexperienced user to what they could at least try to do Here I was thinking that the very same group of people that think sl is a funny command line program wouldn't appreciate humanized error messages...
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  In the python shell, `exit` is a string containing a message to the effect of "You can leave the shell by sending EOF (CTRL-D)". I've seen HN commenters express extreme outrage over this ("They obviously know what you want to do, so why not just do it?!?!?"), but I love it. The first time I got that message, I considered it incredibly helpful, because sending EOF will work on any tool that reads from standard input, not just python. I hadn't known how to do that before the python shell taught me!
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Consider that there is zero reason not to print that line, and exit anyway.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      That's quite far from the truth. That's like saying that, if you read a textbook, there is zero reason to do any of the exercises. And from the implementation perspective, the python shell is trying to run a simple loop: 1. Read a line of python code. 2. Evaluate the code. 3. Print the result. Defining `exit` as the name of a string slots into that loop seamlessly. Defining it as a special keyword that is recognized by the shell, despite the fact that it has no special meaning to python, means you're no longer just reading python code; now you have to implement a separate parser solely for the purpose of handling this command.
imgabe 4y ago
Man, some people will really go out of their way to take things personally and invent things to feel offended about. Errors should certainly be as helpful and clear as possible, but no the developers are not trying to directly attack you specifically if they aren’t, or if they wrote something they thought was fun. Yeesh, get a grip. If I got this error message while trying to buy a train ticket, I'd be thinking "Ok, who do I talk to to get this sorted out" I don't understand the sort of person who stops to think "How dare this error message trivialize my Very Important Problem! I feel bad now because the words on this screen are too silly!"
- enw 4y ago
  "Well, this is awkward" reads as "omg oopsie whoopsie did we make a lwittle error uwu!!! ><" which I'm not surprised is viscerally cringy.
  - imgabe 4y ago
    It literally doesn't though. Maybe they are in the same direction, but there's a rather large difference in degree. That's like saying getting a paper cut on your finger is just like having your arm chopped off. There's a pretty wide difference there. I guess if you're the sort of person to hyperbolicly exaggerate every minor inconvenience you encounter, it's the same thing. It must be exhausting to be like that.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  In all seriousness, the moment when somebody is trying to do something and getting thwarted by error messages is one of the worst possible times to try to be cute with them. You generally don't try to play cute when you can see that someone is in a bad mood, either.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    Family members waiting anxiously in the hospital, the surgery is dragging on, suddenly the waiting room door opens and the surgeon leans in. Family members all turn to the surgeon expectantly. Surgeon: " :( theatrical exaggerated frowny face Something went wrong." Exit surgeon.
valleyer 4y ago
Yes, please. While you're at it, stop replacing "OK" buttons with cutesy replies like "Got it!", which are even worse, IMO, because they apply the cutesiness to my own reply.
- noname120 4y ago
  Along with the buttons in the spirit of “yes please nag me again next time!”
- motoxpro 4y ago
  I agree. The internet is very serious. There is no room for companies or brands to appeal to different personalities.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    An error message isn't a place to be appealing to your personality. It should be simple, concise, with an ok button to acknowledge. Just like when there's a problem with my car it should say "engine issue, contact workshop", and not "motor had an ouchie, call mothership for help".
chucky_z 4y ago
never. double down on them. if https://twitter.com/LucyLavend/status/1543166082223063041 https://twitter.com/LucyLavend/status/1543166082223063041 was what every app gave me i'd have a much better time in life.
faangiq 4y ago
It’s part of the Google approach of treating all your users like subhuman children.
kabdib 4y ago
I have spent linear weeks looking at dialog box errors no more descriptive than: Error -1 These could come from anywhere. If there had been a cute message associated with the error, I could have cracked open the binaries in question, locating the code posting the verbose error, and likely found the problem faster. At least it would have narrowed it down to one DLL out of dozens.
gambiting 4y ago
Also stop treating your users like idiots. The "Something went wrong" of Microsoft products is just offensive when it doesn't even show you the error code - it's basically saying that you're too stupid to understand, so we're not going to show you exactly what happened. I'd maybe understand if it was just MS Word doing this, but when an Xbox Devkit does that, which you know - by definition - only professionals can have and use, then it's worse then useless, it's actively condescending.
- duped 4y ago
  To be fair, googling windows error codes is borderline impossible with all the shitty tech support websites. I think it shouldn't be done for dev tools of course, because devs are the ones that need to see the errors.
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    “The error code 0xwhatever usually means you have a bad driver. We suggest you run dism and sfc, and if that doesn’t work, buy our software!”
    - duped 4y ago
      You have no idea how much this speaks to me. I have a broken installer. I get some random error. Googling suggests I need to reinstall the software... whose installer I am trying to debug. Gee whiz never could have thought of that!
    - isametry 4y ago
      Wait, those “articles“ still exist? The ones where you search how to resize an image, and the very helpful guide on coolmagictech.com tells you somewhere around the 2nd step to download and run the CoolMagic® MagicResizer™ tool? I haven’t seen one of those in like 5 years… But then again, I also haven’t used nor troubleshot Windows in those 5 years. Might be a correlation there?
      - 4y ago
at_a_remove 4y ago
I am guilty of writing weird errors for my own, private programs, such as "That'll put marzipan on your pie plate, bingo!" for something nonsensical in a sanity check, "Fusion of Brundlefly and telepod successful" when something has been accomplished that you really do not want, and so forth. Anything that gets near prod has errors in complete sentences which suggest what might have gone wrong, where to look, and so on.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
But deadpan errors are not great either. Error messages can cause anguish, and it would be good to have emotionally intelligent messages communicated to humans. It doesn't need to be "cutesy", but it can communicate in language that makes people feel less anguish. They should also tell the user what to do next, not just "that didn't work". Don't leave the user hanging.
aaron695 4y ago
ASalazarMX 4y ago
Perfectly expressed in this tweet[0], which originated the "Oopsie Woopsie" meme back in 2018: > "Can websites please stop the trend of giving error messages that are like "OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!" And just give me a fucking error code so I can try and fix it" Tweet is SFW, but artist draws NSFW furries 0. https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594 https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594
- mypastself 4y ago
  I completely disagree with the tweet. Apps usually show this kind of message when the user can’t do anything to fix the problem. If the “code monkeys” are working on it, what’s the user going to do about a crashed database or any other server-side error? If you can do something to fix the issue, the app will usually give you that information. Of course, the app might be clearer and tell the user to retry or contact the administrator. But a generic error message usually implies server-side failure anyway. Perhaps this person expects to receive server credentials as well?
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    The vast majority of the time I've run into programs and apps giving me a vague error message, you can look behind the scenes at logs and Event Manager and similar. It's almost always a dumb software dev made a dumb assumption about a specific file being in a specific place and just chose to not check the return value for errors and it dies. If you log the API calls and debug it yourself, you will be able to find the stupidity and delete/fix/move whatever errant file is causing the issue. So often, literally returning the raw API return value in the "Something went wrong" window would be the best information to provide. It's laziness, it's devs thinking "Users are stupid". It's NOT hard to put a checkbox in the settings somewhere that says "show advanced error details" if you are so damn terrified of average people seeing "Scary" error messages.
- jimmywetnips 4y ago
  I remember the first time we came across this back then and everyone losing their minds. We used to open tickets with fucky wucky all the time when we knew the ticket was gonna be exchanged within our group lmao
tkgally 4y ago
Cutesy messages can be confusing to people whose first language is not English or who are not familiar with current informal spoken English. The use of “This is awkward” in that meaning is, I believe, fairly recent; at least, I don’t remember hearing it when I was young (I’m sixty-five). Someone who learned English out of textbooks probably has never seen it; older native English speakers might be confused by it as well. The developers of a certain password manager used to send e-mails to users that were full of slangy, jokey text. While that may have created a positive impression of the company for younger, native-English-speaker users, I felt that it was very inappropriate for software as important to its users as a password manager. The English in recent e-mails from that company is bland and direct, which is good.
- strken 4y ago
  The old meaning of awkward centuries ago was "turned around the wrong way," awk- meaning odd, and -ward as in "southward" or "upward." I know it's not what the error message is supposed to mean, but it's a funny accident that almost makes it more informative.
russ 4y ago
Never thought I’d say this but, I miss the fail whale.
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
lol I love this. I'd like this to go even further than errors though. A lot of tech product landing pages and documentation are peppered with emoji's and winking/smiling vector art cartoon characters. If you didn't read the sales pitch you'd think these sites were selling products targeted at children. Although I guess it's fitting, in a sad kind of subversive way: the technocracy's desire to infantilize and make dependent as many people as possible.
rdtsc 4y ago
I learned my lesson when a customer read the silly error log messages back to me with their and my supervisor listening in on the line. It was a good thing to learn early as a fresh college graduate and I never forgot it.
naikrovek 4y ago
I agree with everything said in the article. the comment section here should be renamed the "complaint section" and the "add comment" button should be changed to "add complaint". you people complain more than I do, and that is a powerful fscking statement because I complain a LOT.
aag 4y ago
What I don't like are the pop-ups asking me to sign up for a mailing list where the choices are "Sign me up" and "No thanks." Don't put words in my mouth. I am most not definitely not thankful for the opportunity to be spammed. And don't get me started on "Sign up for notifications?" where the choices are "Yes" and "Remind me later."
- bsuvc 4y ago
  Yeah, except they go farther than just "no thanks". It's more like: "do you want to sign up for our financial newsletter?" * Yes, sign me up. * No, I hate making money and choose to be poor. They are hostile towards people who simply don't want to take their spam. Who treats people like that? And is that how they treat people they interact with in person?
Theodores 4y ago
As the article states, these are not good when the proverbial hits the proverbial. Particularly when your boss is standing over your shoulder and the company is losing money, shirts and hair. However, sometimes we can feign 'scheduled upgrades' for '503 site down'. In ecommerce you can say 'we are re-stocking the store, here is a coupon, take a screen break and see you in five'. But actually you might be redeploying the whole codebase due to some fire. Another problem with error messages is how concisely they are written. Cutesy is not concise. And neither is American English. British English is just a little bit more concise, e.g. 'wastepapaer basket' vs 'bin' or 'dehydrated' vs 'thirsty' or 'parking garage' vs 'car park'. In error messages as well as success messages you often have something like 'your thing has been updated successfully' instead of 'thing updated'. Error messages also need to make sense if indexed by a search engine. It has to be unambiguous and specific to the software, not other software. Even if the docs are not available for the error online, you want the error message to be useful when Googled.
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  Americans don't say thirsty?
xwdv 4y ago
Would people appreciate overly apologetic errors along the lines of “Sorry, we fucked up.”?
gumby 4y ago
So the famous Bernie Greenberg "HODIE NATUS EST RADICI FRATER" error message will no longer be allowed?
JetAlone 4y ago
Maybe one day it will be a cutesy error message that informs us our ID is no longer valid and to please wait to be detained lol.
makeitdouble 4y ago
This is a rant about a cute dialog, arguing the UI doesn't explain the issue, nor what to do next. That rant also focuses on the emotional state of the author upon seeing the dialog, doesn't explain how the issue was solve, nor what actually happened next in the application. Looking at the Twitter thread the author is a software developer, and it feels kinda endearing that they're exhibiting exactly the behavior they're ranting about.
EddieDante 4y ago
I'm just grateful nobody's gone so far as to seriously use "Uwu We made a fucky wucky". https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oopsie-woopsie https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oopsie-woopsie
tracerbulletx 4y ago
Is there any data out there on the impact of this? It seems like it could just be a personal aesthetics thing. It doesn't really bother me any more than any other type of error message.
jrm4 4y ago
Another lede is being buried here; cutesy error messages are a pernicious form of escaping responsibility and liability. Which is to say, when you see this sort of thing as a user -- understand that in some form, whoever or whatever entity created the thing you're using doesn't care about you -- or more specifically, has no reason or incentive to treat you respectfully enough to be clear about the error.
wizofaus 4y ago
What I've never heard is how messages like "Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again" actually result in a better experience for anyone at all - yet UX designers seem to love them. Ok, there's no need for errors to be totally cryptic and meaningless to end-users, but the basic principle is a) if the problem is something the user might be able to do something about, explain what they'll need to do (e.g. free up disk space) b) if not, give the user everything they can to ensure if they need to go through a support channel or search elsewhere for info about the error they can get the help they need, i.e. at least some sort of unique message or code. c) if it's a transient error that's not the user's fault, explain that and suggest at what point they should retry (and reassure them that nothing destructive/unwanted/irreversible has occurred or will occur on retrying).
- kevmo314 4y ago
  > how messages like "Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again" actually results in a better experience for anyone at all Didn't you just explain how? > c) if it's a transient error that's not the user's fault, explain that and suggest at what point they should retry Many times when I've sent this type of error but it's not actually transient was a mistake in misclassifying the error. So if the code doesn't actually know it's a or b, it's not surprising it defaults to c.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    > Didn't you just explain how? "Something went wrong" I don't consider as a message that provides a good experience. Actually I didn't even mind the example given in the original article "Token not provided in guest headers", though that very much sounds like a b) error, where it's not transient but there's nothing the user can do about it, but at least they have some sort of unique identifying message/code that can help support figure out the problem. And sure, classifying errors can be tricky, and it absolutely requires following best-practices throughout the codebase to ensure that errors are passed around in a reasonably consistent manner where you can distinguish transient from non-transient errors, or errors where the user can take reparative actions. But the end result makes everything vastly better for the user and developers/testers etc., so is well worth the investment.
chokma 4y ago
A legacy system had an error message like „hahaha operation failed!“ with no explanation, which was most infuriating. They also had the ActOfGodException for things that should not happen…
duncan-donuts 4y ago
Reminds me of a rewrite I was a part of years ago. During the rewrite someone put a humorous picture of a coworker as the 500 page. In development it was amusing but we didn’t hit too many 500 pages so we didn’t see it often. When the launch came no one remembered we had this picture as our 500 page. Customers were not amused to get a picture of some nerd as an error page.
brokenkebab2 4y ago
The message in question is too technical for an end user, and offers no options for recovery. This is exactly what is wrong. Nothing to do with humor, or being cutesy.
rendall 4y ago
The article is quite reasonable contrasted to the headline. If the headline reflected the article, it might read, "Reconsider attempting humor in error messages if the error is likely to make a stressful situation worse" I might be the target demographic for cutesy error messages. I appreciate attempts to empathize with my pain across the gulf of the internet. What I don't appreciate are unhelpful error messages, which seems like the main issue in the article. Like someone who keeps cracking jokes in serious or stressful situations, the devs who are both cutesy and unhelpful aren't reading the room, so to speak, applying insufficient gravity to the situation. I'd appreciate this kind of cutesy message to the circumstance described in the article: Oops! We made an error. But do not worry! Your information is saved. Try reloading the page. If that does not work, here is our customer service number.
krab 4y ago
The error flow is often but designed by the product people because they might not have full view of what can go wrong.
badpun 4y ago
The blog post should be titled "Cut the cutesy error messages". As it stands, I thought it's about reducing some specific class of errors.
staticassertion 4y ago
People can be so humorless. God forbid anyone have some fun.
72deluxe 4y ago
I would also ask that the "what's changed" or "changelogs" for updates from Google (YouTube) apps, Netflix and Slack etc. are consigned to the dustbin forever and ever. "We fixed the tubes that bring you cat videos" tells me nothing. "We worked on great content; you work on watching it" is garbage. "We made fonts the right size now. There you go" sort of change messages from Slack treat you like you're a 6 year old.
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  The update messages for most of my apps are ok - except for all the apps from Google, which have the never changing text...
- Spivak 4y ago
  Would you rather the changelog just say "We don't want to actually want put anything here because our software is evergreen and any given release is just a bunch of random PRs that happened to make it before the cutoff date that isn't worth any amount of human effort both to organize on our end or read on yours but it's not allowed to be blank so here's a random cat fact."
Lio 4y ago
Totally agree with this. Whilst we’re at it, cut the “maybe later” passive aggressive bullshit too. No should mean no and not some kind of some kind of “we know best and you’ll see that with time” nannying crap. It just comes over as ploy to rob users of control.
jspash 4y ago
Slightly off topic, but the phrase "We miss you" in an email is a surefire way of making me click the unsubscribe link. I wonder what makes techie types so ornery?
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think this is a step in the right direction. I remember years ago I had to answer strange tech questions from a relative when their Windows app crashed with an "Illegal Exception" message and they thought someone/thing had broken the law. This language is effective in communicating "we fucked up" to ordinary people I think.
joelthelion 4y ago
In a similar vein, when you try to send a long message, Microsoft Teams says something along the lines of "You're gonna need to make that shorter!" No explanation for the limitation, no apology, no workaround, and no mention of what the damn limit is! Infuriating. Don't patronize your users.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
There's a fairly ubiquitous pattern, these days, with mega-corporations, using "folksy" or humorous, language (Slack/Salesforce comes to mind). I think that it has its place, but, like so many cultural artifacts, needs to be done very, very carefully. Humor and colloquialism doesn't usually translate. That's not just between languages, but also between cultures. Canadian humor may be lost on Americans, and vice-versa. The users of a product are often of a drastically different culture from the creators. It's quite possible that "folksy" stuff from the creators, meant to be comforting and approachable, is perceived as "condescending," or "patronizing," to the end-user. Also, error reporting is an extremely sensitive area. Often. the user is under a lot of stress, and can feel intimidated by the product (and, by extension, its creators). Some developers may feel that "puts the user in their place," but I'd argue that may not be a desirable outcome. I like the users of my stuff to feel comfortable, and in control of their user experience. I have noticed that there's a pervasive disrespect for users, in our industry. In some cases, it comes down to naked hatred. I guess, if we look at the users of our products as cattle, to be fattened, sold, and slaughtered, it's inevitable.
- stavros 4y ago
  As a non-native English speaker, this isn't a big worry for me. I apply a heavy "I have no idea what the intention was" filter. This happens equally with humour and non-humour, and the probability that something doesn't translate is about equal between humour and non-humour, I think.
_gabe_ 4y ago
A lot of comments here sound like they're saying these cutesy messages are what non-technical users would like to see. I don't think this is true. It reminds me of a penguinz0 video I watched awhile ago about Discord's cutesy language. I would say he's a pretty average tech user, and he makes a lot of good points here that have nothing to do with technicalities. He uses a lot of strong language, so if that's not your thing I would advise not watching it https://youtu.be/k5FcL99NuB8 https://youtu.be/k5FcL99NuB8 :) Edit: And it's not about error messages specifically, but I believe these points apply to error messages as well.
mitchbob 4y ago
Remembering the "guru meditations" on the Amiga. HT to RJ.
togs 4y ago
"EdgeError: 988. Call if you need help." "GramError: Don't spend too much time thinking about where to put your commas." "TeachError: Did you read the instructions?" "HistError: <on this day history fact>" "Kerror: I'd like to speak to the sysadmin." "NetError: HSOCK_WIND_ERR_NO_BIND_4_6() expects to be understood." "TsundError: It's not like this means anything, idiot."
bulbosaur123 4y ago
Agreed. I cringe every time.
wseqyrku 4y ago
Not an error message, but I find GitHub's "All caught up! Take a break, write some code, do what you do best." quite condescending.
MollyRealized 4y ago
Speaking as an end user, I agree with the premise, but there's an even more severe case where no technical information is given at all, making the problem impossible to either Google or even report. I've literally seen errors that said: "Something went wrong. Sorry about that." I find myself truly wondering about the fact that somewhere, someone's brain said, "That's fine to do."

386 points by panic 4y ago

Yep. Found out a few months ago that Mozilla’s bug tracker still thinks it’s appropriate to report “zero (matching) bugs found” as “Zarro Boogs Found”: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374266 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1374266

sacrosancty 4y ago
With a comical name like Mozilla, I think they have license to use comical error messages.
- SilasX 4y ago
  That doesn’t follow at all. They still have an international community that needs technical information and shouldn’t be distracted or confused by oh-so-clever jokes when trying to solve errors and bugs. Firefox is intended as a daily utility for serious stuff, regardless of the name of the organization that makes it.
  - mmmpetrichor 4y ago
    The organization is ultimately a collection of developers who have devoted (In this case) 20+ years of their career. I can understand the utilitarian view, but I can also see how they want to keep some humor or personality alive in their product. It's ultimately the decision of the org. Open source stuff is hard enough, imagine seeing tons of demands daily on something you really care about and then seeing something like this that doesn't, ultimately, even matter. I can understand a tiny bit of hostility. I will add, don't take free software for granted, it doesn't owe you anything. I think the reverse is true.
    - SilasX 4y ago
      There are plenty of ways they can have humor that don’t compromise technical docs. You want to know how to ease the load of maintaining open source? Make onboarding easier. That means good, clear docs that aren’t cluttered with cryptic inside jokes. Seriously, the way they work, you’d almost think they don’t want people to get involved. (In Mozilla’s case, probably because they blew their budget on the latest resume builder.) It would be one thing if I were asking for a special feature of the product. Here, I’m asking for something that saves your support staff from being pestered by people that couldn’t understand the cryptic docs. Why wouldn’t you want that? [1] Why wouldn’t you be thanking anyone who suggests ways to save you time? Sometimes I wonder if noticing this kind of stuff is a superpower, because it’s in really short supply. [1] Maybe because you moonlight as an Optimism maintainer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30294065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30294065
shadowgovt 4y ago
As the bug notes, at this point in history it's unlikely this will be changed because it's been this way so long that tooling that works by screen-scraping a bugzilla output would break if "zarro" went away. https://github.com/search?p=3&q=zarro+boogs&type=Code https://github.com/search?p=3&q=zarro+boogs&type=Code At this point it's probably insufficiently confusing to justify the change. The most valuable piece of advice I ever got regarding error messages was "Here's what users do with an error message they don't understand: they Google it." As long as the key words are unambiguous in meaning it can actually be more harmful than beneficial to change a message like that (when people are trying to figure out why their bugzilla installs are showing zero bugs, will they lose all the accreted historical knowledge on StackOverflow for fixing "zarro boogs" issues if Mozilla changes the message?).
- SilasX 4y ago
  Did you know that there are people born every day that haven't been indoctrinated into Mozilla's oh-so-clever inside jokes, and they might start using the software one day[1] -- or at least, that's what Mozilla claims to wait, their organization practices notwithstanding. If it's really important that the parser pick up the string "Zarro Boogs Found", then you can leave it in invisible text, and then leave the rest of the world out of your counterproductive in-joke. [1] But at this rate, that's becoming less likely.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > Did you know that there are people born every day that haven't been indoctrinated into Mozilla's oh-so-clever inside jokes Probably yes. And when they see that error and have more questions about it, many will Google "Zarro Boogs" and find StackOverflow links and various other sources. If the text is changed or made invisible, that search pathway becomes obscured. As inconvenient as it is for making changes to published UI, unique and identifiable strings serve as a sort of "soft URL" in this era of ubiquitous search engines.
    - SilasX 4y ago
      >Probably yes. And when they see that error and have more questions about it, many will Google "Zarro Boogs" and find StackOverflow links and various other sources. The point of a help resource is that you avoid, where at all possible, making the user need other help resources. >If the text is changed or made invisible, that search pathway becomes obscured. That's not how text search works. >As inconvenient as it is for making changes to published UI, unique and identifiable strings serve as a sort of "soft URL" in this era of ubiquitous search engines. So do you think maybe there's a lesson in here about building a culture around being opaque to outsiders? Or do you take it as an indicator to be more opaque, lest we alienate those who like scaring off the users that the project exists to help?

hprotagonist 4y ago

My favorite bugzilla text: zarro boogs found

jcpst 4y ago

I really wish more devs would treat errors as first class, the same level of importance as a success response. We had an error page at a previous job that had an <h1> OOPS!. Not sure who made it, but they didn’t think much of it, and a lot of users really didn’t like it.

titzer 4y ago
This is why I have grown to hate expressing errors as exceptions. Nowadays, I handle errors one of two ways: it's either part of the return value of the function (i.e. an error state, usually a case of a variant), or the caller passes an error handler object, with the default behavior is the error handler records a list of things that went wrong. Threading the error handler through generally isn't too bad; then you can check it whereever you want and handle it at the top level. It's almost impossible to swallow an error unless you create a new error handler object and throw it away, which would be a very rude thing to do. This works especially well for parsing data, as you can write most of the parser completely oblivious of previous errors and keep on truckin'. The top-level parse routine will surface the first lexicographical error. The code is very clean but still gives really good error messages (and multiple! I used this for the Virgil parser and entire compiler).
mmmpetrichor 4y ago
Let's make a distinction between errors delivered to users buying a train ticket on an app (as in the original article) and errors meant for developers. It feels like hardly anyone in the thread is making that distinction.

foofoo55 4y ago

In a similar vein, I quite dislike Microsoft's personification of Windows in the messages such as "We couldn't log in ...", "Let's finish setting up ..." or "We are adding new features ..."

rogual 4y ago
To me it shows Microsoft's attitude that Windows is a little tunnel into your house through which they can act. The computer isn't doing a thing. The user isn't doing a thing. The vendor is doing the thing, using the equipment they've got in your home.

Jugurtha 4y ago

It is unproductive when the message politely wrong - or wrongly polite. Example: "It's not you, it's us" when I know for a fact that it is a network error on my side because it's of my own doing..

mmmpetrichor 4y ago

Lighten up people! I actually find it kind of funny how OP was filled with rage by a cutsey error message. I hope they can laugh in hindsight about how this triggered them to make a serious blog post.

needle0 4y ago

Elaborately worded error messages are also hostile against users who are not native speakers of the application's UI language. They're already spending extra mental effort just using the software as-is; while native speakers may find a cutesy error message and just go "Huh", non-natives may not even understand that it's an error at all, wasting time.

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nopcode 4y ago

While we’re at it, can we do the same for loading screens? I’d like to know my DNS is hanging rather than something completely made up, Discord.

mysterydip 4y ago
"App hung at 'zapping the flibber flabbers', please help"
BitterAmethyst 4y ago
At least they removed the atrocious "links are spoopy" line when you click a hyperlink

pigbearpig 4y ago

Yeesh, so many comments here take things so seriously. It’s like gallows humor, errors suck so why not add a little levity.

twobitshifter 4y ago

I couldn’t believe the first time I saw the sad smiley blue screen. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing for Microsoft to have done. Then I remembered fiddling on Macs as a kid, if you screwed up you’d see a bomb. If you did something really wrong you’d get the mac icon with Xs for eyes. The point being: cutesy errors are about as old as personal computing, but they do seem to becoming more prevalent.

mysterydip 4y ago
Came here to say the same. The problem is they seem to be hiding information (for some reason): Instead of being able to search "errornumber appname", you're stuck with a pastel picture of some cartoon character shrugging and text of "whoops! something happened. why don't you try restarting?"
- userbinator 4y ago
  Instead of being able to search "errornumber appname", you're stuck with a pastel picture of some cartoon character shrugging and text of "whoops! something happened. why don't you try restarting?" Are you referring to Teams, by any chance? I don't mind them being artsy, but if that's a replacement for the actual detailed error message, it both makes the user and the people trying to help helpless. Imagine helping someone over the phone or in person; e.g. if you can see "error 10060", you know instantly that it's a network connection problem. If it's an access violation ("illegal operation" was unfortunate but still far more informative terminology) or a c0000005, the application probably messed itself up. You can ask people to read you error codes or search them yourself (being sure to quote them --- the horrible vagueness of search engines is another rant I won't get into here, although it also adds to the problem...). If all the application says is "something wrong", no one can help. All but the extremely perceptive could as a result be easily mislead into reinstalling the application, reinstalling the OS, and all manner of other stupidly destructive and ultimately futile actions, only to find out that the problem was ultimately due to something else entirely.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  > Came here to say the same. The problem is they seem to be hiding information (for some reason): Back when I worked at a computer shop I've had customers come to the shop with a hand-written report of the Windows XP BSOD message; like, all of this.[1] They were always very nice people by the way. Also, all the text is boilerplate and 100% irrelevant to the actual error (UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME). It's not going to be fixed by a Windows update (which you can't install since you can't boot the thing) or disabling "caching" BIOS options. Not showing any text instead of that is probably better. It wouldn't be too hard to make a error message → useful description map for common problems like this, but good error messages/help was never Windows' strong point... [1]: https://neosmart.net/wiki/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08/unmountable-boot-volume.png https://neosmart.net/wiki/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08...

ddejohn 4y ago

oopsie woopsie! https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594 https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594 edit: I always thought this tweet was hilarious. I'm definitely not a furry though, looking through OP's tweets now that I've linked one of theirs...

lmm 4y ago
If you feel the need to tell everyone about how non-furry you are just because you linked someone's tweet, you're probably not as secure in your non-furriness as you want to claim.
- strken 4y ago
  I think the intent of the edit is to warn anyone who clicks the link that they're one more click away from furry porn, possibly on their work computer.
  - bunbunbun 4y ago
    Then they could added a warning that commented on the nsfw aspect and not on their own non-furriness.
  - _Algernon_ 4y ago
    You'd accomplish that by appending "(NSFW)". Anything more complicated than that signals insecurity.
- mpalmer 4y ago
  Hmm. When the thread knows literally one fact about you, and it's that you had a link to a furry art twitter account at the ready, you can be forgiven for doing a little brand management.
- xxxxyxxyxxyxyx 4y ago
  Are there studies that link announcement of not being X, with actually being X? I always thought that line of reasoning is ridiculous. It also uses X as being a 'gotcha', which seems similar to using X as an insult. I mean you don't 'get people' with things they are fine with admitting. Maybe not an insult exactly but it definitely feels like an attack. I'm sure there are people who, being ashamed of being something, do go out of their way to say that they aren't. However I don't think seeing someone saying it once mean they "probably" are that thing. You can be annoyed/embarrassed at the thought of being seen as something you aren't. I don't know the type of people who follow NSFW furry artists on twitter, but I imagine a lot of them are furries themselves. If the OP doesn't want to be associated with them then I think it's reasonable to state he isn't one.

blacksmith_tb 4y ago

Hmm, I don't think the problem is cuteness or lack thereof, it's the lack of either a suggested fix ("sign back in" or "try restarting" etc.) or even some kind of cryptic id you could report to Customer Service - "why am I getting a #4747 error trying to complete my transaction!?"

munk-a 4y ago
The cryptic IDs can be rather nice - if I throw "ERROR YCOMB-143" at least it's pretty likely you can google an answer... but if you're able to deliver such a distinct error state to the user can't you save a step and include a message about how to resolve the error state (i.e. "ERROR YCOMB-143 Your account is too young to down vote comments")
- int_19h 4y ago
  Cryptic IDs are indispensable for support, because you can't expect the support staff (or the dev who's ultimately going to be handling the bug) to know all the languages the app was localized into. Without IDs, it can be real fun trying to figure out what's wrong from, say, a screenshot of the Chinese version of the app.

rschachte 4y ago

draw_down 4y ago
dspillett 4y ago
If the system you are having trouble with is important to your work or otherwise essential, being a bit antsy about the matter is perfectly understandable IMO.
- rschachte 4y ago
  “Oopsies, I can’t find what you’re looking for” with a 404 in the response header versus “404 not found” with a 404 in the response header seems pretty reasonable to me. If they deviate from standards, sure.

PainfullyNormal 4y ago

I like the cutesy errors. It makes it marginally less likely that I will put my fist through my computer monitor. Those things get expensive after a while.

batch12 4y ago
Interesting how people differ so much. These make me far more likely to have to purchase a new monitor or mouse..
- PainfullyNormal 4y ago
  > Interesting how people differ so much. Life would be rather dull otherwise.
anon_cow1111 4y ago
I miss CRT monitors for exactly this reason, they at least offer some resistance...

slaymaker1907 4y ago

I’ve seen far worse errors. In practice, I think writing good error messages is very difficult for system (or unexpected) errors because you often don’t know the context of what the program was doing before the error happened. Stack traces help approximate this context, but they are imperfect because they are a point in time. The solution to this problem is really good logging, but that is almost always hidden away from users. I’m fine with whimsy, but don’t treat your users like babies by hiding away all diagnostic information like logs.

shawnz 4y ago

OP makes a reasonable argument about why error messages should be constructed the way they prefer, but is it actually backed up by usability testing? Maybe the cutesy errors really do have a subconscious positive effect which is being overlooked here?

wowokay 4y ago
Agreed. And while I’m sure we have all been let down by apps/tech at one point or another, I think the user in this case discounts the tremendous effort put into developing apps, and to me a somewhat “cutesy” error message is enough to remind me that a human created the very opportunity I feel let down by.
pseudalopex 4y ago
Were cutesy errors backed up by usability testing?
- shawnz 4y ago
  If not then that just means that both this counterargument against cutesy errors as well as the original rationale to have them in the first place are both equally weak. That's not a point in favour of this argument.
  - pseudalopex 4y ago
    Points in favor of this argument can be found in other comments.
    - shawnz 4y ago
      OK, sure, but what does that have to do with what I'm saying about usability testing being important to validate your hypotheses?
Rastonbury 4y ago
I started a reply thinking this is probably absurd to do, but I realise it's probably possible. A/B test error messages, outcome are support tickets, app reviews. That's said I'm not sure if anyone would bother to setup tests for error messages, there probably more important things to do like fix the actual cause

munk-a 4y ago

I think this article is great but it buries the lede. The cutesy errors are indeed bad but more important is being informative about what actually went wrong and how to resolve it. A while ago I introduced a new error class hierarchy at <JOB> which introduced three distinct families of errors - one that was considered a user error (that would be thrown in response to some action that we can predict happening but not totally prevent), one that is considered to have a user friendly message but be generally unexpected, and anything else. If you try and insert something invalid into the DB you'll get a user unfriendly message - if, within the calling function, you know why your call to the DB would fail with a key collision (for instance) you can create a new chained exception off the original and rethrow with a human readable message - when it hits the top level of execution (assuming nothing catches it) then the error printing logic will iterate through the full chain and print everything human readable and dump the full traces of any errors not marked as user side. This lets us quickly triage new errors (since known user errors are kept out of the main error log) and presents an easy way to convert logged errors to unlogged ones when we've determined the source of the issue (assuming it's an exception we're comfortable with - a lot of our "user" errors are server-side validation that should be prevented by client-side code). It also forces any errors that we haven't specifically marked as human-readable to render as "Internal Server Error" which we hate along with supplying an easy route to provide a more meaningful error message. I never, in my life, want to read an error message that starts with "GuzzleHttp encountered a malformed response from aws. ..." nor do I ever want to see "[SQL1002] The newly inserted row would violate constraint widgets_name_key" - write good errors.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
This was a twitter thread, so not too surprising, but the concluding tweet went there too: "Good error messages explain what’s gone wrong, and give clear instructions for what to do next – and being cutesy rarely helps." and there's a link to https://alexwlchan.net/2020/10/the-importance-of-good-error-messages https://alexwlchan.net/2020/10/the-importance-of-good-error-... as the dedicated writeup (also from tweets) for that specific point.
snapdaddy 4y ago
I disagree with nearly every response in this thread (not yours). The 'cutesy' error messages are step 1 to providing a better user experience. 'This is awkward! Something went wrong and it's probably our fault :-(' is much better for users than 'Unexpected error occurred in logTicketResponse' And no, it isn't sufficient, but it is better. Providing useful error messages is really hard (and it sounds like your application does a good job of it), and we as software developers are not very good at it. For everyone who complains about the cutesy error messages, how much time are you spending in your own code to provide useful error messages that explain the problem and suggest resolutions?

bryanlarsen 4y ago

The failure mode of clever is asshole - John Scalzi

dspillett 4y ago

> “Token not provided in guest headers.” I have no idea what this means, or what I can do about it. At least this example gives you something that you can report to support of you do contact someone about the issue. It if you are a bit techie you might be able to judge for yourself if trying again is worth it or a waste of time. Many issues don't even give you that much.

ravenstine 4y ago
My all-time favorite: > "MySQL server has gone away" Gone away? You mean like it packed its bags and hopped aboard a train to another town? Surely you're not trying to say that the connection timed out or anything more specific.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I kinda wonder why that was never fixed/improved. Too many error handling dependent on that specific message maybe.
  - manwe150 4y ago
    Maybe because ‘gone away’ is the best it can know without a full network diagnostic? Else why is the connection timed out: did it do something wrong and get punished? Or did I wait too long to get a reply, or perhaps I was online too long today, or are you saying it is shareware, and I need to reset the trial clock? xD
- gtowey 4y ago
  In this case it might be hard to improve. It's a message generated by the client which means that it was expecting something from the server and instead the connection was terminated. It's a sign that something has gone wrong on the server side, but it's impossible for the client to know what that is. Especially because most of the time MySQL connections are each a thread and there may be time between when something server side terminated the thread and when the client tries to talk to the server again. It's better for the server to release all the resources immediately instead of waiting for the client so it can return a more helpful error message.

donkarma 4y ago

it's not a cutesy error. it cuts the bullshit and tells you what went wrong right in the body

tjmc 4y ago
It tells the developer what went wrong. It tells the customer nothing.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Which is better than not telling either. At least with this one, a technically-minded customer can sometimes infer the meaning of the developer-focused message.

bityard 4y ago

I have a problem with software that tries harder to be "cute" than useful, but that's a rant for a different day... I think the issue with error messages like these aren't so much that they are cute, it's that while the developer thinks they are being clever somehow, these kinds of messages usually come off as patronizing or condescending to the user, especially when the user DOES have the technical skill to know what's actually wrong.

RajT88 4y ago

Maybe "Guru Meditation" would be better? At least it contains the suggestion of being more serene about the whole affair.

SLWW 4y ago

> This post was adapted from a thread on Twitter. Lot of words to express frustration when a Tweet with an image attachment could convey the same. "Well this is awkward" is just the "header" for any error you may experience during the process with that application, and is the same thing that Mozilla does (essentially) when the browser crashes.

UmYeahNo 4y ago

Could not agree more. At least it better than "Something went wrong. Try again later." That drives me berserk.

krisoft 4y ago
Ok, so what do you prefer then? I mean other than bug-free code of course.
- kweingar 4y ago
  A brief description of the error, an error code, and (depending on context) instructions on how to get help is much nicer than “something went wrong.” Even something simple like “the request timed out” helps the user troubleshoot and rules out entire classes of errors
deleted 4y ago
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_8j50 4y ago

I like the cuteness it helps not take things too seriously and focus on the problem. Things failed and you broke the internet for everyone on the planet but there is no time to panic only to focus and get things done.

5cott0 4y ago

and if you are going to insist on printf debugging please stop spamming emojis

mrandish 4y ago

My biggest frustration is long error numbers which can't be selected for copy/paste. Worse yet is web addresses as text instead of being clickable links.

Lammy 4y ago

Firefox has one of these when a tab process crashes: "Gah. Your tab just crashed." https://user-media-prod-cdn.itsre-sumo.mozilla.net/uploads/images/2017-08-11-05-57-08-275c74.png https://user-media-prod-cdn.itsre-sumo.mozilla.net/uploads/i... I really hate the way the "Gah" wording feigns shock, as if Mozilla are also inconvenienced alongside me. Then the meat of the error implies I am at fault. It's my tab that crashed, and I caused it to happen by doing whatever I did on whatever page I was choosing to visit. Any blame is deflected away from Firefox itself. Then it makes me feel doubly bad because I immediately realize I'm getting upset at something incredibly trivial, but man it annoys me!!

routerl 4y ago
Yeah, I think there are two approaches to any text a user sees in your app: is it copy, or is it data? The file/edit/etc menus are data. Concise, clear errors are data. "Gah. Your tab just crashed" is copy.
reaperducer 4y ago
I don't get shock from "Gah." I get embarrassment and disappointment, which seems appropriate for the situation. Firefox is ashamed that it screwed up. Then again, I'm from the age when the internet was still fun, and everything didn't have to be corporate, uniform, serious, and boring.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  All the fun will be sucked out of software development one mildly offended HNer at a time.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    I don't inherently mind fun, but error messages being fun/cutesy is not the time.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Doing things that are kind of funny for the developers, and then ordinary users have wildly varying opinions of... isn't so great.

zht 4y ago

one simple pet peeve of mine is when websites use the word "simply" in their help articles. it is annoying because I am likely reading the page because I am running into issues so I am already frustrated. "simply" implies that the issue that I have is so simple to fix and that I'm stupid for not knowing how to do this simple thing however, most of the time there is some backend or unexpected error and their "simply" advice just doesn't work. I hate it

MandieD 4y ago
That should be one of the top commandments of tech writing: Thou shalt not use the word "simply", because you are either insulting users or leaving something important out. Or both.

prvc 4y ago

Siri is the worst with this, but instead of "cutesy", when it's failing to execute a simple command, it goes for a smarmy and sarcastic response. I'll never understand the mindset of the putative audience who its designers think this will please.

TillE 4y ago
Siri used to randomly give cutesy responses when I asked it to set a timer instead of repeating the time back to me, which I found incredibly annoying. Fortunately they stopped doing that a couple years ago.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Siri has degraded so much for me that I suspect a sarcastic response is now beyond its abilities.
- throwaway284534 4y ago
  Apple has definitely softened up Siri’s demeanor over the years, and I think it was a deliberate decision to introduce her as standoffish. I once read that waitresses who initially come off as rude earn higher tips, but only if their mood softens throughout the meal. There seems to be something about “winning” the waitstaff over that makes diners reward them with higher tips. IMO, it was a feature to have Siri come off as rude when her abilities and comprehension were still in development.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  If asked the answer to zero divided by zero, she used to say a whole paragraph joke about how you’re sharing your zero cookies with zero friends because you have no friends. There’s videos on YouTube; I thought it was funny. They changed that a few months ago to something more “tame”, but still millennial/zoomer humor.
  - prvc 4y ago
    Today, in response to the query, "What is zero divided by zero?", Siri still gives a flip explanation (but now omitting the reference to Sesame Street intellectual property), followed by the one word sentence "No.". And that's when it's working as intended. Astounding.

trynewideas 4y ago

From a support perspective, this kind of error immediately puts customers in a bad mood. If you/your company uses cute errors, ask your support team what they think about them. If they're cool with it, they're probably not a problem.

sowbug 4y ago

Some more rants: 1. Tell me accurately whether trying again will accomplish anything. Don't say "try again in a few moments" if the error is essentially fatal. Your summer intern's flaky microservice can't keep up? Then sure, go ahead and tell me to roll the dice and hope to get luckier on the next submit. But if my session has expired, don't keep showing me the button that you know requires a valid session to succeed. 2. Similarly, if I need to do something differently to succeed, then tell me what to do. Don't just say "Sorry, try again." If it's my auth error, then tell me to try different credentials. If it's your transient error, then tell me so. Don't make me play 20 Questions with your form submission flow. (Yes, there can be security reasons why you don't want to reveal exactly what's wrong with a bad request. You can still provide a better experience than Human Binary Search.) 3. Are you seriously going to make me press this button again and again for the next 10 minutes? Isn't repetitive activity exactly what computers are for? Sure, there's the risk of your clients DDOSing your server when something goes wrong. But that's what exponential and/or randomized backoff is for. It's insulting to distill your entire UX down to the world's worst CAPTCHA in the form of a single "press me again for an unknown number of times" button. Press it for me, and tell me when you did what I asked! 4. I'm looking at you, every smart speaker ever. "Sorry, Spotify couldn't fulfill that request." OK, but do you think that means that I changed my mind about wanting to hear the song? I feel a special kind of rage knowing my Alexa history has five consecutive "Alexa, play Dolly Parton Here You Come Again" requests, spoken increasingly stridently each time. It's like Rant #3 but making me write out the request in crayon rather than press a button. If you're actually an assistant, then assist me by hiding Spotify's endless spurious errors from me and taking care of them. Don't make me fill the 60 seconds of silence by shouting louder and louder at you. Tell me "I'm sorry, Spotify is having trouble with your request. I'm still working on it." Then play the damn song.

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[deleted]
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I don't think most of these are realistic. In most error modalities, you simply won't know whether trying again is the right medicine (and if you do, you'd most likely not see an error message). The error may be anything from a cosmic ray to a bad release to an OVHcloud-class datacenter fire, from a software POV you really can't tell.

micromacrofoot 4y ago

This is just an ask to be empathetic. When you have a gaming chat app, you can say "uwu we made a little ewwor" and it's not a big deal. On the other hand, you don't want your health insurance app to say "owie! we need a bandaid" when they can't load a list of in-network hospitals. There's a time and a place for fun. Software doesn't have to be boring, but some of it should be.

reggieband 4y ago

It's such a tiny thing, but my pet peeve is exclamation marks in error messages. "Something went wrong!" is something I see a lot of engineers do. I don't usually call it out but it bugs me whenever I see it.

CornCobs 4y ago

I actually from a less technical person's perspective, "cute" error messages humanize errors, showing them that there was indeed someone who made that page they are currently on and not just some soulless computer and thus making solving the problem much more approachable! Example 1: Chrome's dino page is actually great! Grandma doesn't fear it or call me out of panic the moment she sees it. Imagine if she got something like the default Apache 500 error webpage. Example 2: the new BSOD. I saw on some other thread that some people hate it, but I think it's clear and directs the inexperienced user to what they could at least try to do Here I was thinking that the very same group of people that think sl is a funny command line program wouldn't appreciate humanized error messages...

thaumasiotes 4y ago
In the python shell, `exit` is a string containing a message to the effect of "You can leave the shell by sending EOF (CTRL-D)". I've seen HN commenters express extreme outrage over this ("They obviously know what you want to do, so why not just do it?!?!?"), but I love it. The first time I got that message, I considered it incredibly helpful, because sending EOF will work on any tool that reads from standard input, not just python. I hadn't known how to do that before the python shell taught me!
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Consider that there is zero reason not to print that line, and exit anyway.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    That's quite far from the truth. That's like saying that, if you read a textbook, there is zero reason to do any of the exercises. And from the implementation perspective, the python shell is trying to run a simple loop: 1. Read a line of python code. 2. Evaluate the code. 3. Print the result. Defining `exit` as the name of a string slots into that loop seamlessly. Defining it as a special keyword that is recognized by the shell, despite the fact that it has no special meaning to python, means you're no longer just reading python code; now you have to implement a separate parser solely for the purpose of handling this command.

imgabe 4y ago

Man, some people will really go out of their way to take things personally and invent things to feel offended about. Errors should certainly be as helpful and clear as possible, but no the developers are not trying to directly attack you specifically if they aren’t, or if they wrote something they thought was fun. Yeesh, get a grip. If I got this error message while trying to buy a train ticket, I'd be thinking "Ok, who do I talk to to get this sorted out" I don't understand the sort of person who stops to think "How dare this error message trivialize my Very Important Problem! I feel bad now because the words on this screen are too silly!"

enw 4y ago
"Well, this is awkward" reads as "omg oopsie whoopsie did we make a lwittle error uwu!!! ><" which I'm not surprised is viscerally cringy.
- imgabe 4y ago
  It literally doesn't though. Maybe they are in the same direction, but there's a rather large difference in degree. That's like saying getting a paper cut on your finger is just like having your arm chopped off. There's a pretty wide difference there. I guess if you're the sort of person to hyperbolicly exaggerate every minor inconvenience you encounter, it's the same thing. It must be exhausting to be like that.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
In all seriousness, the moment when somebody is trying to do something and getting thwarted by error messages is one of the worst possible times to try to be cute with them. You generally don't try to play cute when you can see that someone is in a bad mood, either.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  Family members waiting anxiously in the hospital, the surgery is dragging on, suddenly the waiting room door opens and the surgeon leans in. Family members all turn to the surgeon expectantly. Surgeon: " :( theatrical exaggerated frowny face Something went wrong." Exit surgeon.

valleyer 4y ago

Yes, please. While you're at it, stop replacing "OK" buttons with cutesy replies like "Got it!", which are even worse, IMO, because they apply the cutesiness to my own reply.

noname120 4y ago
Along with the buttons in the spirit of “yes please nag me again next time!”
motoxpro 4y ago
I agree. The internet is very serious. There is no room for companies or brands to appeal to different personalities.
- gambiting 4y ago
  An error message isn't a place to be appealing to your personality. It should be simple, concise, with an ok button to acknowledge. Just like when there's a problem with my car it should say "engine issue, contact workshop", and not "motor had an ouchie, call mothership for help".

chucky_z 4y ago

never. double down on them. if https://twitter.com/LucyLavend/status/1543166082223063041 https://twitter.com/LucyLavend/status/1543166082223063041 was what every app gave me i'd have a much better time in life.

faangiq 4y ago

It’s part of the Google approach of treating all your users like subhuman children.

kabdib 4y ago

I have spent linear weeks looking at dialog box errors no more descriptive than: Error -1 These could come from anywhere. If there had been a cute message associated with the error, I could have cracked open the binaries in question, locating the code posting the verbose error, and likely found the problem faster. At least it would have narrowed it down to one DLL out of dozens.

gambiting 4y ago

Also stop treating your users like idiots. The "Something went wrong" of Microsoft products is just offensive when it doesn't even show you the error code - it's basically saying that you're too stupid to understand, so we're not going to show you exactly what happened. I'd maybe understand if it was just MS Word doing this, but when an Xbox Devkit does that, which you know - by definition - only professionals can have and use, then it's worse then useless, it's actively condescending.

duped 4y ago
To be fair, googling windows error codes is borderline impossible with all the shitty tech support websites. I think it shouldn't be done for dev tools of course, because devs are the ones that need to see the errors.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  “The error code 0xwhatever usually means you have a bad driver. We suggest you run dism and sfc, and if that doesn’t work, buy our software!”
  - duped 4y ago
    You have no idea how much this speaks to me. I have a broken installer. I get some random error. Googling suggests I need to reinstall the software... whose installer I am trying to debug. Gee whiz never could have thought of that!
  - isametry 4y ago
    Wait, those “articles“ still exist? The ones where you search how to resize an image, and the very helpful guide on coolmagictech.com tells you somewhere around the 2nd step to download and run the CoolMagic® MagicResizer™ tool? I haven’t seen one of those in like 5 years… But then again, I also haven’t used nor troubleshot Windows in those 5 years. Might be a correlation there?
    - 4y ago

at_a_remove 4y ago

I am guilty of writing weird errors for my own, private programs, such as "That'll put marzipan on your pie plate, bingo!" for something nonsensical in a sanity check, "Fusion of Brundlefly and telepod successful" when something has been accomplished that you really do not want, and so forth. Anything that gets near prod has errors in complete sentences which suggest what might have gone wrong, where to look, and so on.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

But deadpan errors are not great either. Error messages can cause anguish, and it would be good to have emotionally intelligent messages communicated to humans. It doesn't need to be "cutesy", but it can communicate in language that makes people feel less anguish. They should also tell the user what to do next, not just "that didn't work". Don't leave the user hanging.

aaron695 4y ago

ASalazarMX 4y ago

Perfectly expressed in this tweet[0], which originated the "Oopsie Woopsie" meme back in 2018: > "Can websites please stop the trend of giving error messages that are like "OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!" And just give me a fucking error code so I can try and fix it" Tweet is SFW, but artist draws NSFW furries 0. https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594 https://twitter.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594

mypastself 4y ago
I completely disagree with the tweet. Apps usually show this kind of message when the user can’t do anything to fix the problem. If the “code monkeys” are working on it, what’s the user going to do about a crashed database or any other server-side error? If you can do something to fix the issue, the app will usually give you that information. Of course, the app might be clearer and tell the user to retry or contact the administrator. But a generic error message usually implies server-side failure anyway. Perhaps this person expects to receive server credentials as well?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  The vast majority of the time I've run into programs and apps giving me a vague error message, you can look behind the scenes at logs and Event Manager and similar. It's almost always a dumb software dev made a dumb assumption about a specific file being in a specific place and just chose to not check the return value for errors and it dies. If you log the API calls and debug it yourself, you will be able to find the stupidity and delete/fix/move whatever errant file is causing the issue. So often, literally returning the raw API return value in the "Something went wrong" window would be the best information to provide. It's laziness, it's devs thinking "Users are stupid". It's NOT hard to put a checkbox in the settings somewhere that says "show advanced error details" if you are so damn terrified of average people seeing "Scary" error messages.
jimmywetnips 4y ago
I remember the first time we came across this back then and everyone losing their minds. We used to open tickets with fucky wucky all the time when we knew the ticket was gonna be exchanged within our group lmao

tkgally 4y ago

Cutesy messages can be confusing to people whose first language is not English or who are not familiar with current informal spoken English. The use of “This is awkward” in that meaning is, I believe, fairly recent; at least, I don’t remember hearing it when I was young (I’m sixty-five). Someone who learned English out of textbooks probably has never seen it; older native English speakers might be confused by it as well. The developers of a certain password manager used to send e-mails to users that were full of slangy, jokey text. While that may have created a positive impression of the company for younger, native-English-speaker users, I felt that it was very inappropriate for software as important to its users as a password manager. The English in recent e-mails from that company is bland and direct, which is good.

strken 4y ago
The old meaning of awkward centuries ago was "turned around the wrong way," awk- meaning odd, and -ward as in "southward" or "upward." I know it's not what the error message is supposed to mean, but it's a funny accident that almost makes it more informative.

russ 4y ago

Never thought I’d say this but, I miss the fail whale.

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

lol I love this. I'd like this to go even further than errors though. A lot of tech product landing pages and documentation are peppered with emoji's and winking/smiling vector art cartoon characters. If you didn't read the sales pitch you'd think these sites were selling products targeted at children. Although I guess it's fitting, in a sad kind of subversive way: the technocracy's desire to infantilize and make dependent as many people as possible.

rdtsc 4y ago

I learned my lesson when a customer read the silly error log messages back to me with their and my supervisor listening in on the line. It was a good thing to learn early as a fresh college graduate and I never forgot it.

naikrovek 4y ago

I agree with everything said in the article. the comment section here should be renamed the "complaint section" and the "add comment" button should be changed to "add complaint". you people complain more than I do, and that is a powerful fscking statement because I complain a LOT.

aag 4y ago

What I don't like are the pop-ups asking me to sign up for a mailing list where the choices are "Sign me up" and "No thanks." Don't put words in my mouth. I am most not definitely not thankful for the opportunity to be spammed. And don't get me started on "Sign up for notifications?" where the choices are "Yes" and "Remind me later."

bsuvc 4y ago
Yeah, except they go farther than just "no thanks". It's more like: "do you want to sign up for our financial newsletter?" * Yes, sign me up. * No, I hate making money and choose to be poor. They are hostile towards people who simply don't want to take their spam. Who treats people like that? And is that how they treat people they interact with in person?

Theodores 4y ago

As the article states, these are not good when the proverbial hits the proverbial. Particularly when your boss is standing over your shoulder and the company is losing money, shirts and hair. However, sometimes we can feign 'scheduled upgrades' for '503 site down'. In ecommerce you can say 'we are re-stocking the store, here is a coupon, take a screen break and see you in five'. But actually you might be redeploying the whole codebase due to some fire. Another problem with error messages is how concisely they are written. Cutesy is not concise. And neither is American English. British English is just a little bit more concise, e.g. 'wastepapaer basket' vs 'bin' or 'dehydrated' vs 'thirsty' or 'parking garage' vs 'car park'. In error messages as well as success messages you often have something like 'your thing has been updated successfully' instead of 'thing updated'. Error messages also need to make sense if indexed by a search engine. It has to be unambiguous and specific to the software, not other software. Even if the docs are not available for the error online, you want the error message to be useful when Googled.

schnitzelstoat 4y ago
Americans don't say thirsty?

xwdv 4y ago

Would people appreciate overly apologetic errors along the lines of “Sorry, we fucked up.”?

gumby 4y ago

So the famous Bernie Greenberg "HODIE NATUS EST RADICI FRATER" error message will no longer be allowed?

JetAlone 4y ago

Maybe one day it will be a cutesy error message that informs us our ID is no longer valid and to please wait to be detained lol.

makeitdouble 4y ago

This is a rant about a cute dialog, arguing the UI doesn't explain the issue, nor what to do next. That rant also focuses on the emotional state of the author upon seeing the dialog, doesn't explain how the issue was solve, nor what actually happened next in the application. Looking at the Twitter thread the author is a software developer, and it feels kinda endearing that they're exhibiting exactly the behavior they're ranting about.

EddieDante 4y ago

I'm just grateful nobody's gone so far as to seriously use "Uwu We made a fucky wucky". https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oopsie-woopsie https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oopsie-woopsie

tracerbulletx 4y ago

Is there any data out there on the impact of this? It seems like it could just be a personal aesthetics thing. It doesn't really bother me any more than any other type of error message.

jrm4 4y ago

Another lede is being buried here; cutesy error messages are a pernicious form of escaping responsibility and liability. Which is to say, when you see this sort of thing as a user -- understand that in some form, whoever or whatever entity created the thing you're using doesn't care about you -- or more specifically, has no reason or incentive to treat you respectfully enough to be clear about the error.

wizofaus 4y ago

What I've never heard is how messages like "Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again" actually result in a better experience for anyone at all - yet UX designers seem to love them. Ok, there's no need for errors to be totally cryptic and meaningless to end-users, but the basic principle is a) if the problem is something the user might be able to do something about, explain what they'll need to do (e.g. free up disk space) b) if not, give the user everything they can to ensure if they need to go through a support channel or search elsewhere for info about the error they can get the help they need, i.e. at least some sort of unique message or code. c) if it's a transient error that's not the user's fault, explain that and suggest at what point they should retry (and reassure them that nothing destructive/unwanted/irreversible has occurred or will occur on retrying).

kevmo314 4y ago
> how messages like "Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again" actually results in a better experience for anyone at all Didn't you just explain how? > c) if it's a transient error that's not the user's fault, explain that and suggest at what point they should retry Many times when I've sent this type of error but it's not actually transient was a mistake in misclassifying the error. So if the code doesn't actually know it's a or b, it's not surprising it defaults to c.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  > Didn't you just explain how? "Something went wrong" I don't consider as a message that provides a good experience. Actually I didn't even mind the example given in the original article "Token not provided in guest headers", though that very much sounds like a b) error, where it's not transient but there's nothing the user can do about it, but at least they have some sort of unique identifying message/code that can help support figure out the problem. And sure, classifying errors can be tricky, and it absolutely requires following best-practices throughout the codebase to ensure that errors are passed around in a reasonably consistent manner where you can distinguish transient from non-transient errors, or errors where the user can take reparative actions. But the end result makes everything vastly better for the user and developers/testers etc., so is well worth the investment.

chokma 4y ago

A legacy system had an error message like „hahaha operation failed!“ with no explanation, which was most infuriating. They also had the ActOfGodException for things that should not happen…

duncan-donuts 4y ago

Reminds me of a rewrite I was a part of years ago. During the rewrite someone put a humorous picture of a coworker as the 500 page. In development it was amusing but we didn’t hit too many 500 pages so we didn’t see it often. When the launch came no one remembered we had this picture as our 500 page. Customers were not amused to get a picture of some nerd as an error page.

brokenkebab2 4y ago

The message in question is too technical for an end user, and offers no options for recovery. This is exactly what is wrong. Nothing to do with humor, or being cutesy.

rendall 4y ago

The article is quite reasonable contrasted to the headline. If the headline reflected the article, it might read, "Reconsider attempting humor in error messages if the error is likely to make a stressful situation worse" I might be the target demographic for cutesy error messages. I appreciate attempts to empathize with my pain across the gulf of the internet. What I don't appreciate are unhelpful error messages, which seems like the main issue in the article. Like someone who keeps cracking jokes in serious or stressful situations, the devs who are both cutesy and unhelpful aren't reading the room, so to speak, applying insufficient gravity to the situation. I'd appreciate this kind of cutesy message to the circumstance described in the article: Oops! We made an error. But do not worry! Your information is saved. Try reloading the page. If that does not work, here is our customer service number.

krab 4y ago

The error flow is often but designed by the product people because they might not have full view of what can go wrong.

badpun 4y ago

The blog post should be titled "Cut the cutesy error messages". As it stands, I thought it's about reducing some specific class of errors.

staticassertion 4y ago

People can be so humorless. God forbid anyone have some fun.

72deluxe 4y ago

I would also ask that the "what's changed" or "changelogs" for updates from Google (YouTube) apps, Netflix and Slack etc. are consigned to the dustbin forever and ever. "We fixed the tubes that bring you cat videos" tells me nothing. "We worked on great content; you work on watching it" is garbage. "We made fonts the right size now. There you go" sort of change messages from Slack treat you like you're a 6 year old.

shellfishgene 4y ago
The update messages for most of my apps are ok - except for all the apps from Google, which have the never changing text...
Spivak 4y ago
Would you rather the changelog just say "We don't want to actually want put anything here because our software is evergreen and any given release is just a bunch of random PRs that happened to make it before the cutoff date that isn't worth any amount of human effort both to organize on our end or read on yours but it's not allowed to be blank so here's a random cat fact."

Lio 4y ago

Totally agree with this. Whilst we’re at it, cut the “maybe later” passive aggressive bullshit too. No should mean no and not some kind of some kind of “we know best and you’ll see that with time” nannying crap. It just comes over as ploy to rob users of control.

jspash 4y ago

Slightly off topic, but the phrase "We miss you" in an email is a surefire way of making me click the unsubscribe link. I wonder what makes techie types so ornery?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I think this is a step in the right direction. I remember years ago I had to answer strange tech questions from a relative when their Windows app crashed with an "Illegal Exception" message and they thought someone/thing had broken the law. This language is effective in communicating "we fucked up" to ordinary people I think.

joelthelion 4y ago

In a similar vein, when you try to send a long message, Microsoft Teams says something along the lines of "You're gonna need to make that shorter!" No explanation for the limitation, no apology, no workaround, and no mention of what the damn limit is! Infuriating. Don't patronize your users.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

There's a fairly ubiquitous pattern, these days, with mega-corporations, using "folksy" or humorous, language (Slack/Salesforce comes to mind). I think that it has its place, but, like so many cultural artifacts, needs to be done very, very carefully. Humor and colloquialism doesn't usually translate. That's not just between languages, but also between cultures. Canadian humor may be lost on Americans, and vice-versa. The users of a product are often of a drastically different culture from the creators. It's quite possible that "folksy" stuff from the creators, meant to be comforting and approachable, is perceived as "condescending," or "patronizing," to the end-user. Also, error reporting is an extremely sensitive area. Often. the user is under a lot of stress, and can feel intimidated by the product (and, by extension, its creators). Some developers may feel that "puts the user in their place," but I'd argue that may not be a desirable outcome. I like the users of my stuff to feel comfortable, and in control of their user experience. I have noticed that there's a pervasive disrespect for users, in our industry. In some cases, it comes down to naked hatred. I guess, if we look at the users of our products as cattle, to be fattened, sold, and slaughtered, it's inevitable.

stavros 4y ago
As a non-native English speaker, this isn't a big worry for me. I apply a heavy "I have no idea what the intention was" filter. This happens equally with humour and non-humour, and the probability that something doesn't translate is about equal between humour and non-humour, I think.

_gabe_ 4y ago

A lot of comments here sound like they're saying these cutesy messages are what non-technical users would like to see. I don't think this is true. It reminds me of a penguinz0 video I watched awhile ago about Discord's cutesy language. I would say he's a pretty average tech user, and he makes a lot of good points here that have nothing to do with technicalities. He uses a lot of strong language, so if that's not your thing I would advise not watching it https://youtu.be/k5FcL99NuB8 https://youtu.be/k5FcL99NuB8 :) Edit: And it's not about error messages specifically, but I believe these points apply to error messages as well.

mitchbob 4y ago

Remembering the "guru meditations" on the Amiga. HT to RJ.

togs 4y ago

"EdgeError: 988. Call if you need help." "GramError: Don't spend too much time thinking about where to put your commas." "TeachError: Did you read the instructions?" "HistError: <on this day history fact>" "Kerror: I'd like to speak to the sysadmin." "NetError: HSOCK_WIND_ERR_NO_BIND_4_6() expects to be understood." "TsundError: It's not like this means anything, idiot."

bulbosaur123 4y ago

Agreed. I cringe every time.

wseqyrku 4y ago

Not an error message, but I find GitHub's "All caught up! Take a break, write some code, do what you do best." quite condescending.

MollyRealized 4y ago

Speaking as an end user, I agree with the premise, but there's an even more severe case where no technical information is given at all, making the problem impossible to either Google or even report. I've literally seen errors that said: "Something went wrong. Sorry about that." I find myself truly wondering about the fact that somewhere, someone's brain said, "That's fine to do."