What users say versus what they mean
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@Rhywden brought up something that gave me a topic idea:
@Rhywden said in A Lounge Thread:
"Let me present Exhibit A: This here paper states, and I quote it in its full length: The printer is out of ink. Take particular note of the fact that nowhere it mentions the author, make of printer or the room it is in. And, by the way, I found the printer: It was a LASER one."
Anyone who deals directly with users of any sort can probably come up with tons of these, where a user says one thing and means another. Think of this as an offshoot of WTF Bites, but just what users said versus what they meant. Bonus hilarity if you had to go a circuitous route to realize what they meant, or if a user said something that is the exact opposite of what they meant and it sent you on a wild goose chase to find what they meant.
Some of the ones we hear regularly:
"I think there's something wrong with my hard drive" where "hard drive" means the computer tower.
"Our interenet is really slow" which actually means "This one shitty website that we use for our work is a laggy sack of monkey shit programmed by inept idiots from Kerbleckistan and chances are the SQL behind the queries I am running would make a D student freshman CompSci major cringe in agony"
"The thingy" which could mean almost anything up to and including the kitchen sink or phone book. Usually when you ask them to elaborate so you know
they are getting on about they say, "You know? The thingy.""Some of my emails aren't going through" which 99% of the time means "I am getting grief for not doing something, so I am going to blame it on email as to why it was not sent out on time"
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"I'm so bad at this" =>"I made a mistake."
I hear this from the kids all the time.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in What users say versus what they mean:
"I'm so bad at this" =>"I made a mistake."
You are in teaching. When you are in IT support it means something different:
"I'm so bad at this" => "I just broke it really badly. You're going to be here for a while. I hope you brought a USB installer because you might have to pave over and reinstall to fix this one."
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"I tried to fix it myself." => "I fucked it up worse than it was before. Call your family, you are working late tonight."
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@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"I tried to fix it myself." => "I fucked it up worse than it was before. Call your family, you are working late tonight."
Alternate meaning: "I am the reason that users can't have local admin"
Recently we had an issue that was exactly like this, except this user did have local admin. One of my guys had elevated her account to local admin when he was setting up the computer. They use a particularly shit software with an especially shit installer that just shits itself unless you install it under an admin account. Run as Administrator usually won't cut it. The problem was he missed one of the final items on the checklist and forgot to take away local admin when he was done.
Imagine a ~50 year old busy body getting local admin, perceiving issues, Googling and just trying everything that comes up.
"I didn't want to be a bother"That means, I made myself a huge bother, just go ahead and reinstall Windows because you cannot be sure of what I might have done.
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@Polygeekery I've heard it (in the IT context) to mean: "I don't even want to try and learn anything new, even with explicit instructions. You're not allowed to change anything. For any reason. It's all your fault if something breaks."
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This will reveal my Reddit username but it fits so well I don't care.
This was posted by an ex co worker of mine, I'm the guy who closed off the ticket at the end of the story
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@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
Imagine a ~50 year old busy body getting local admin, perceiving issues, Googling and just trying everything that comes up.
Same user, same new machine: She does a lot of presentations to their board and such. Basically everyone in that office got new machines at the same time, but she wanted a thinner, lighter laptop. So hers was just slightly different than everyone else's. My guy tells her that she will need a different adapter to be able to hook to their projector, offers to order it for her and she declines because:
"I don't want to be a bother."Luckily we have all of this in email (If it isn't it writing, it didn't happen). She goes for her first presentation with the new laptop and cannot hook up to the projector. We get a very agitated email to our helpdesk. Presentation is over and we get another agitated email, part of which was:
"You guys made me look like a fool in front of the board. Can I get a laptop like everyone else's so this isn't an issue?"Which meant: "I forgot to do what I said I would do and what you offered to do for me, I looked like an idiot and now I am looking for someone to blame. Also, I am going to try to blame you because I had to be different."
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Nothing special, pretty much the general âI clicked ok without readingâ
: I canât use it, the simulation crashed! Please fix!Okay, sounds bad. Scrambling to reproduce the crash, no luck. After some time, I get his complete project setup (which he delayed providing) and the actual result is:
: The simulation cannot be started because [the shit you entered is unphysical]. Please correct [some parameters] first.That is not a crash. Thatâs more like the opposite of a crash. It also told you exactly what to do.
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@topspin I don't know what it is about error messages that cause people to momentarily lose all reading comprehension.
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@kazitor
E_ASSUMES_FACTS_NOT_IN_EVIDENCEYou sweet, summer child... assuming they could read to begin with...
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@izzion Ha ha, very funny.
But you'll find you literally tell people what the message says and they suddenly understand so well.
"So I should change some things so that they're correct?"
Yes that is exactly what the error message said.
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We frequently get calls from people claiming $companyname isn't working. Uhu ... yeah our software isn't always shining ... but come on ... we make almost 10 major applications and double so smaller once. Most of them are very departmental, so you end up trying to tell them what fucking department they are in ... and no bitch 'la cave' (the basement) is not a department. And yes please give me the full fucking hospital name ...
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@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"I tried to fix it myself." => "I fucked it up worse than it was before. Call your family, you are working late tonight."
I usually try to fix it myself.
I've joke that,
I do my own technical support
is the programmer equivalent of,
I do my own stunts
I screwed up my work computer badly enough I had to restore it back to save point before. I've never even done that at home. I had to ask my husband how long it would take while I took a break so no one would notice.
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@kazitor said in What users say versus what they mean:
@topspin I don't know what it is about error messages that cause people to momentarily lose all reading comprehension.
It is the same thing with emails. When Google Apps became a thing we migrated tons of businesses that were hosting their own Exchange servers. When all of that started I took the experience from the first migrations and made an email that would be sent out to everyone affected that covered the common issues. Literally every common issue we encountered I would put in the email that would go out prior to migration.
We never had a single question asked after the email went out that would not have been answered by reading said email. That email was less than 5 paragraphs. It was a couple of minute read. After the first few migrations we did we never had a single question not answered in the preparatory email. Not a single one. Yet we still got emails that said:
"I read the email but..."
Where "but" means "I didn't even glance at the email, I fired off the first question that came to mind".
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X doesn't work.
means
I may not even have actually started doing X. I'm just angry and need someone to take the blame for it.
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I don't know how this happened
Means: I know exactly how this happened, in detail. But, it was a truly stupid mistake and now I'm embarrassed.
So, you'll now have to take extra time to figure stuff out and will hate me twice as much as if I'd just told you.
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@Cursorkeys said in What users say versus what they mean:
I don't know how this happened
Means: I know exactly how this happened, in detail. But, it was a truly stupid mistake and now I'm embarrassed.
So, you'll now have to take extra time to figure stuff out and will hate me twice as much as if I'd just told you.Yep. I have run across that one in the wild.
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Application $X isn't working. All users impacted.
Completely missing that every application requiring a functioning network is "not working".
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@Cursorkeys said in What users say versus what they mean:
Means: I know exactly how this happened, in detail. But, it was a truly stupid mistake and now I'm embarrassed.
Variant: "By the way, I did <really stupid thing that's an obvious cause for the problem>, but I don't think it's relevant.". Best delivered after you ruled out all of the obvious causes, and several arcane ones.
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A different take on the topic: If I had a dollar for every user who claimed that the hack that gave them access to stolen accounts to evade bans and/or not have to buy the game was actually installed by their brother / friend, I'd be a rich man.
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@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"hard drive" means the computer tower.
You know my ex-wife? Yeah, from years of using a dumb terminal, it (the monitor) was "the computer," and when she got a desktop computer, the main difference, from her perspective, was that she now had local storage, so the new box was the "hard drive." At some point I gave up trying to correct her.
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@HardwareGeek said in What users say versus what they mean:
At some point I gave up trying to correct her.
ex-wife
Hmmmm.
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@pie_flavor said in What users say versus what they mean:
not have to buy the game was actually installed by their brother
This is actually true for me for exactly one version of Minecraft (before the mandated Mojang login and then Microsoft). It was a pretty nifty system, if I do say so myself, had a auto-unpacker, made shortcuts, the works!
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@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"Some of my emails aren't going through" which 99% of the time means "I am getting grief for not doing something, so I am going to blame it on email as to why it was not sent out on time"
Either that or they forgot to press Send.
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@Tsaukpaetra Yes, that's the one. After the login started being enforced, the hack started replacing the authentication servers in your hosts file, so that it could continue to do the same thing.
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@dkf said in What users say versus what they mean:
@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"Some of my emails aren't going through" which 99% of the time means "I am getting grief for not doing something, so I am going to blame it on email as to why it was not sent out on time"
Either that or they forgot to press
Sendreturn.The main reason my stuff is never at the printer when I go to get it...
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Requirements document from a project engineer/manager: what needs to change, what problems currently exist, etc.
PM fancies himself a programmer; I get the impression he practices 'debugging' our stuff by fondling chicken bones, and perceives this as a cromulent way to divine the source of problems.
In-house terms replaced with (leaky, abstractionist,) generics here:
<VPN> failover logic: presently broken â when <server> or <client> process fails, the <connection tester used by the clients before setting up the VPN> on the <server> continues to function and so the <client> doesnât failover to another <server> but fails to get a <VPN> tunnel up.
Background: <connection tester> is wholly unrelated to the <VPN>[1]. <connection tester> can be (and in some cases, actually is) on different servers at the other side of the country/world and still perform its function.
My reply:
Who wrote this? This is completely incorrect. It's not even wrong.
<connection tester> has no relevance to <server-side VPN> - certainly not as described, and clearly presumed, here.
I suspect this is a manifestation of the 30 minute timeout, that was demanded [2] for <esoteric version of VPN being used here> preventing the <client> from trying another <server> to begin with for that period.
Later, after some attempted obfuscation by a manager also in the cross-fire, I wrote:
In the first instance I'd like that part of the document corrected. It's simply wrong.
[1] Except insofar as to determine whether it's currently worth even trying to connect to the VPN.
[2] Demanded by the author of <esoteric VPN>. I pushed back. I was told to shut up. So I surreptitiously made it configurable with the stupid default, instead of being a compiled-in static value. Some years later, that configuration option is now slowly being pushed out and used. Default timeout on the more regular connections is in the order of a minute.
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@dkf said in What users say versus what they mean:
@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"Some of my emails aren't going through" which 99% of the time means "I am getting grief for not doing something, so I am going to blame it on email as to why it was not sent out on time"
Either that or they forgot to press Send.
I forgot about that one. That is probably the most common cause of "My emails aren't going out/getting to who I send them to".
I am guilty of that one, but I know the cause. Anytime someone says something about how I promised to send them something and I know I sent it I check my drafts folder. I can usually trace it back to the email being done and everything except me hitting "Send" and then the phone rang. That causes my CRS to kick in.
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One of these days I had Gmail completely refuse to send emails from the web interface. I hit Send and nothing happened.
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@kazitor said in What users say versus what they mean:
@topspin I don't know what it is about error messages that cause people to momentarily lose all reading comprehension.
Yup. "An error message is shown" => "The app crashed (and destroyed everything)"
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@M_Adams said in What users say versus what they mean:
@dkf said in What users say versus what they mean:
@Polygeekery said in What users say versus what they mean:
"Some of my emails aren't going through" which 99% of the time means "I am getting grief for not doing something, so I am going to blame it on email as to why it was not sent out on time"
Either that or they forgot to press
Sendreturn.The main reason my stuff is never at the printer when I go to get it...
Don't worry. Some day your prints will come....
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@levicki Most of you complaints are valid, but...
@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
"The user name or password is incorrect. Try again." -- Try what? Username? Or password? Or both? Don't you fucking know which one is wrong?
Not necessarily - if you entered a user name that was valid but not the one you meant, it would (hopefully) be the wrong password for that account, but technically it's the user name that's wrong. Even if they know that the user name you supplied is invalid, keeping the error message generic is a security measure to keep you from being able to harvest a list of known accounts.
"Bug Check 0xA: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"
Why when the OS is already writing a minidump it doesn't immediately do a WinDbg!analyze -von it and tell me the fucking driver name which is responsible for the crash?In my experience it does...
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
Windows rarely shows driver name on BSOD and if it does it is not always correct.
Raymond Chen wrote about this in his blog. The driver which crashes is not necessarily the buggy one, because its memory may have been corrupted by another driver. So MS avoided mentioning the driver by name in the BSOD screen, to avoid companies getting blamed for problems they may not be responsible for.
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
Computer should leave that distinction to me. It should tell me that the password for the entered username is wrong which is the absolute truth and if I am blind to notice that I entered wrong username that's on me.
"The password for the entered username is wrong"
"Username or password is incorrect"I don't see a substantive difference between those error messages. They tell you that one of the two is wrong; they don't tell you which one.
That is not a security measure -- that is security through obscurity. Security measure are failure audit logs and computer refusing further login attempts after N unsuccessful attempts.
It's not "security through obscurity", it's "slowing the rate at which a malicious user is able to lock out valid accounts".
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
"The user name or password is incorrect. Try again." -- Try what? Username? Or password? Or both? Don't you fucking know which one is wrong?
It's more secure to not say which.
edit:
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
@loopback0 said in What users say versus what they mean:
It's more secure to not say which.
It is not. If the user already has login credentials they can just
dir C:\Usersto see which users ever logged in to that system and learn their usernames.The fuck?
Let's see... I have credentials to about 193 sites stored in my google password manager.
Number of them which allow me to "just
dir C:\Usersto see which users ever logged in to that system and learn their usernames." : 0.And if you already have a login... how the fuck are you failing to log in? Someone help me out on what fallacy this is...
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
if the system is shared it is shared with people of equal access / clearance level.
Exactly! That's why we have one account in this company. It's name is
Normal, and it's the Normal account. And it only differs from theAdminaccount in that it has a period at the end!
Filed under: Not actually embellished
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
If the user already has login credentials they can just dir C:\Users to see which users ever logged in to that system and learn their usernames.
If the user already has credentials and they're already logged in (as would be required to
dir C:\Users) they're not impacted by the login error in any way. They're not the target of any such security measure.
Not specifying which one is wrong makes it harder for the people who aren't supposed to be logging in and don't know which username(s) are correct.
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@Tsaukpaetra
It's not he seas his own situation and experiences as the absolute reality.
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@levicki Iâm sure thereâs lots of terribly written error messages out there (thatâs the UI bites thread), but
: âWhat did the message say?â
: âI donât know.â
: âDid you click yes or no?â
: âI donât know.âcan hardly be blamed on it.
Doesnât matter how well or badly written the error message is when the user doesnât read it.
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@loopback0 said in What users say versus what they mean:
Not specifying which one is wrong makes it harder for the people who aren't supposed to be logging in and don't know which username(s) are correct.
Case evidence exhibit A:
Notice the lack of trying the
normalaccount? Because,adminisn't allowed to log in to that particular server (for reasons).Guess telling them that "That username is invalid" really didn't help security none, did it?
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@Luhmann said in What users say versus what they mean:
@Tsaukpaetra
It's not he seas his own situation and experiences as the absolute reality.Oh yeah. Hey @levicki , what are your opinions on Discourse?
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@topspin said in What users say versus what they mean:
@levicki Iâm sure thereâs lots of terribly written error messages out there (thatâs the UI bites thread), but
: âWhat did the message say?â
: âI donât know.â
: âDid you click yes or no?â
: âI donât know.âcan hardly be blamed on it.
Doesnât matter how well or badly written the error message is when the user doesnât read it.Ok. Then I don't know how to help you. Case closed.
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
- "File not found / Cannot open file / Error reading file" or any other variations thereof during program startup which cause it to close immediately -- Which file? Where were you looking for it?
- "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" at line of code which looks like
ref1.ref2.ref3.member-- which fucking object?
"The given key was not present in the dictionary."
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
It is usually terribly badly written error messages that gives them the mental paralysis (or in my case a fit of rage).
Not in the fucking slightest. Absolutely nobody reads the error boxes unless someone tells them to.
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@Zecc said in What users say versus what they mean:
"The given key was not present in the dictionary."
That's always been my chief gripe with the .NET collections. Java's model of returning null if absent is a much better model IMO.
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@levicki said in What users say versus what they mean:
Try what? Username? Or password? Or both? Don't you fucking know which one is wrong?
Yes.
Giving hints in this situation is wrongâ˘.
But, given the number of replies, I rather suspect
....
