
Should error messages apologize? - tsudot
http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/31359/should-error-messages-apologize
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xbryanx
I once pulled up to a parking ramp gate. A recorded voice asked me to "please
take the ticket." I was fumbling for something in my car and no one was behind
me, so I just sat there for a minute. The voice repeated, "please take the
ticket." I continued to fumble. The third time the recorded voice came on, the
tone had changed to stern and authoritarian. It barked, "take the ticket." I
jumped to attention and grabbed for the ticket.

It's fascinating how powerful the change in tone and dropping the formalities
affected my behavior. There's a case for pleasantries in some situations.
There's a case for pithy authoritarian messages in others.

~~~
neumann
That's brilliant. Reminds me of trials with different voices and tones for GPS
voice navigation where. Personally the snoop dogg voice is most appealing

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bhousel
This is a pet peeve of mine. I honestly think we should reserve politeness for
human-human interactions only.

When the self-checkout machine at the supermarket says things like " _Please_
scan your item, _Please_ place your item in the bag, _Please_ scan your credit
card, _Please_ take your receipt" it devalues the word _Please_. The machine
does not give a shit about you, so it should not be using that word.

Edit: I just jumped on a conference call. " _Please_ enter your access code
followed by the pound or hash sign. _Please_ say your name and press the pound
or hash sign. _Thank you._ You will now be connected to your conference." UGH!

(Yes I know I have unusually strong feelings about this issue).

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ChuckMcM
Traditionally 'please' is way of affirming lower status, the asking party
accepts that they are lower status than you but would like you to consider
taking an action their behalf. Since the machine cannot scan your items itself
(yet) it has to ask you to do that, it can't really order you to do that.

I suppose it could say, "The process will begin when you start scanning
items." but it's simpler to use the honorific.

In error messages apologizing is present perhaps because the service requested
could normally be performed but due to circumstances it cannot.

~~~
bhousel
The machine does not need to affirm its lower status. _It 's a machine._

When it becomes sentient, then it earns the right to talk to me like human
would. Until then, don't pretend to be something that you are not.

Edit: Maybe I'm weird, but I would prefer it to say something like "SCAN NOW",
in a robot voice. Maybe add an "OK" if you want to soften it up a bit.

~~~
oakwhiz
Exactly. A machine affirms its lower status by simply doing what it is
supposed to do. Machines that incorrectly second-guess the user, or offer
apologies often make people feel as though the machine is being condescending,
or trying to control them instead.

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chatman
Stallman said that non free software controls the users. Such software & its
developers must be made to apologise, unless the software is made free.

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devindotcom
The idea, I think, is that the error is apologizing on behalf of the people
who run the website, who can't be expected to be there in person to say sorry.
You get "sorry" messages from other-than-humans all the time: "Sorry, we're
closed" or "Sorry, this machine is out of order."

In each case I've always thought of it as shorthand for "The management is
sorry to inform you that..." or something like that. It's mean to be a sort of
humanity surrogate, and I don't see much of a problem with that.

Of course, it can easily go overboard. Over-"please"-ing and "thank you" after
every single step can be wearying - on phone support, it's always "thank you
for giving me that information. I'm sorry for the wait while I put it in. We
thank you for your patience."

~~~
derefr
I think I only find apologies strange when they come from devices I consider
to be an extension of my own agency, rather than an emissary for someone
else's. If a vending machine apologizes for being out of stock, that's the
vending-machine company doing the apologizing. But if my Windows PC says
sorry, that's not Microsoft apologizing to me; that's effectively me
apologizing to myself.

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nostromo
A slight tangent: never ever use a passive aggressive tone in UX.

"I'm sorry you're having trouble." <\-- not ok

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that." <\-- ok

I'm surprised how common this is becoming. Machines shouldn't talk down to
humans until they're clearly our superiors.

~~~
brudgers
"I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid
that's something I cannot allow to happen." <\-- Not O.K.

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efbenson
The book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop [1] shows that if you asked a person
if they view a computer they have iteration with it view it as a person to
person engagement they would say no, experiments show otherwise. There is a
base emotional impact from these things that people don't obviously notice.
Sure the user would not think that message seems impolite they will notice it
at least subconsciously. A good example is when rating a piece of software via
a electronic survey the group that took the survey on the same computer they
used the software on consistently gave it better scores. Its a very
interesting book.

[1] [http://smile.amazon.com/Man-Who-Lied-His-
Laptop/dp/161723004...](http://smile.amazon.com/Man-Who-Lied-His-
Laptop/dp/1617230049)

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vacri
As always, write to your audience. If your product is used by techies,
'please' and 'sorry' are chaff. If it's the non-technical public, the same
words can make concepts easier to digest, along with writing the error in a
more general tone. "Sorry" clearly means something wrong has happened.
"Please" clearly means something needs the user to do something.

~~~
userbinator
Agreed. Although in general, I like my error messages terse and to-the-point;
for example, I'd definitely prefer "file %s not found." over something like
"Sorry, but we regret to inform you that the specified file cannot be found.
Please try again."

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Mz
Some years back, I was going through withdrawal from medication and just could
not keep my feet out of my mouth on an email list. I wrote a number of
sincere, heartfelt apologies, clarifying what I meant without backing down
from what I was trying to say but taking full responsibility for any
abrasiveness of offensiveness.

The result: I soon became the list scapegoat. I became everyone's bitch.
Having a bad day and just want to go apeshit on someone? Hey, kick the crap
out of Michele and demand that she apologize. The entire list with back you
and say "there she goes again!"

I also worked for an insurance company for over five years. Things in
insurance are strongly driven by "can they sue us?" and "will that sound
guilty in a court of law?" So I don't care if it is a machine saying it. The
machine represents some company and many people will, like the linked xkcd
comic in the above piece, conclude you are admitting guilt if you say "sorry."

So I think: No. Do not apologize. You just convince people you are in the
wrong and that leads to bad things.

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iffycan
It's funny that #2 on the list uses negative words to say "Don't use negative
words." It's almost like negative words can be valuable.

~~~
andrewflnr
That's not the point. No one here is claiming that negative words can never be
valuable. The question is about time appropriate to the situation. People take
lots of subconscious cues from time. A developer asking for technical advice
can be expected to look past the tone. With paying, non technical customers,
you take nothing for granted.

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dm2
Depends on the situation and the audience.

"Sorry, our engineers didn't allocate enough resources or our programmers
didn't account for your specific inputs, so we can't process your request."
sounds reasonable to me.

An error message because of a blank input field should not apologize and
should simply say, "Your email address was left blank, please enter a valid
email address below." Saying "sorry" would be like saying, "sorry you messed
up, dummy".

For a 404 message, it's difficult to tell whether or not the link came from a
3rd party or your own website, so I'd argue that simply saying, "page not
found" is sufficient.

"Sorry, our systems are overwhelmed at the moment, please try again later." is
better than "Our systems can't handle this much traffic, come back later."

[http://imgur.com/asdfasdf](http://imgur.com/asdfasdf)

[https://github.com/asdfasdfasdfb](https://github.com/asdfasdfasdfb)

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analog31
A long time ago, a friend of mine had a computer made by Atari with a GUI
shell of some sort. When an error message popped up, the button you had to
click said: Sorry.

I was pretty indignant about having to apologize to a machine.

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WiseWeasel
If the error is caused by the user, the message should not apologize.

 _Sorry, the email address you entered appears to be invalid._

That just sounds condescending; you know they're not really sorry.

However, if the error is caused by your system, including any third party
dependencies, then an apology is in order.

 _Sorry, the requested service appears to be inaccessible at the moment.
Please try again later._

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euske
"Sorry for inconvenience" is pretty much a norm in Japan, be it software or
not. You go to a construction site and you'll see tons of signs with manga
characters bowing. Also in Japanese it's pretty common to say "excuse me"
instead of "thank you."

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return0
People love to be pampered. People are confused by computers. It's free to be
apologetic to make them feel better. I 'll add as many apologies as needed to
make my users feel good.

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__matt
What would be the point of that? you might as well write something like "Error
0x000332, program aborted" that's as helpful as an apology to the normal user

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lukasm
Actually, this is very useful message for me. I can google the error and fix
the problem on the spot.

Desktop software trained people to parse it.

~~~
derefr
If that's the sole use-case of having an error ID, then the error dialog
should probably just embed a web browser with search results, to save you a
step.

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imgabe
I would rather use my own browser than whatever half-assed kludge someone was
forced to throw into the help system at the last minute.

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chatman
Its about time users are humiliated by the computers for making mistakes.
Perhaps punish them in some form.

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dbg31415
If written by a Canadian, yes they should.

