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Comment by ulfw | Hacker News Reader

That translation is wrong. It’s almost the opposite.

Vorführeffekt is when you are trying to show something works (for example to an audience/in a presentation) and it does NOT work in said presentation.

Remember this oldie but goldie for USB Plug and Play on Windows? https://youtu.be/IW7Rqwwth84

PS: thanks for all the comments! Didn't realise the double negation would work too. (Trying to show a bug you found in a meeting/to an audience but then it turns out it actually behaves unexpectedly as originally intended. No bug.)

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No. Vorführeffekt is used for anything that suddenly behaves differently when an audience is present. Be that features that suddenly don't work when observed, or bugs that suddenly don't reproduce anymore, etc.

A sign that you may be beset by goblins bent on causing you mischief.

Ok, but that doesn't make the translation any better. It's still wrong.

To all the oh-so-smart downvoters:

The translation is wrong because it makes things unnecessarily complicated. The term Vorführeffekt is used when something suddenly behaves differently in a not desired way when shown to others. The argument about double negation is logically right, yet entirely theoretical, as no sane person would ever describe or translate the effect in such a doubly-negated way to someone else.

That's how I use the word, too. It's a Heisenbug, though only one that manifests itself when you try to present something.

A Heisenbug can be observed in many situations. The Vorführeffekt happens only in front of an audience.

I think I get what you're trying to say, but by definition an observation requires an audience, even if it's an audience of 1. Maybe say an increased audience size?

I think a "presenter" is required.

That's how I use the word, too. It's a Heisenbug.

> That translation is wrong. It’s almost the opposite.

It's exactly the same thing, isn't it? You just negate the predicate you want to show everywhere.

Absolutely: it's when you want to show that it doesn't work and it does not doesn't work :)

> it does NOT work in said presentation.

You mean like the Vorführeffekt when you're trying to show the bug and then it isn't there? :)

The bug works, but when I try to show it, it vanishes, so it does NOT work no more (but will probably reappear as soon as the presentation is over).

Excatly. German speaker here, parent is correct. I looked for a description in English, I found this exchange on reddit which IMO describes it exactly:

"What never works exactly as it's supposed to?" "Opening YouTube videos on a PowerPoint" "It works fine until the actual presentation"

But it can also refer to a bug that usually happens not happening when you try to show the bug to someone else. E.g. having no TV reception for some reason and getting someone to look at it, but when they show up, the reception is perfect.

It just means "demonstration effect", right?

Yep

Yes, demonstration (as in presentation) effect.

Parent comment is wrong, as you just demonstrated with your statement about the bug not occurring.

Parent comment is correct, because you try to show the bug but it won't rear it's ugly head when you do, so the bug does NOT work.

Sooo was the famous Windows 98 BSOD a case of the Vorführeffekt or not? Plug'n'play functionality for the scanner did not work when demonstrated to the audience in that instance.

Yes, if what usually happens in private (and what you are hoping to demonstrate to another person or an audience) is different from what happens when you demonstrate it, you can [0] call it Vorführeffekt.

[0] since it's not an actual effect [0a], kinda like Murphy's law isn't a real law, you can call it that way, but you're not required to.

[0a] other than maybe nervousness of the presenter affecting things, but I don't think Windows is ever nervous about crashing.

If you abstract "non-function" as the thing that is meant to be demonstrated, then it surely is a Vorfuhreffekt (literal translation: demonstration effect). More formally, the Vorfuhreffekt is "I just observed X so I wanted to demonstrate it, but then while demonstrating it, X did not occur". Now just substitute X for "non-function" and resolve the double negations by DeMorgan's law.

I'm wondering whether the Vorfuhreffekt can be explained in terms of statistics, similar to regression to the mean. I.e. the observation that something worked or worked very well is often an outlier, so when repeating the experiment, one get a worse outcome in expectation. It is a kind of selection bias.

I've been thinking patience might play a role; I had this issue often as a kid.

When you have a computer problem and do some things to fix them, it doesn't work, you call a parent over and they do exactly the same thing and it does work... hm.

Maybe the computer was just stressed by my constant attempts and clicking and going away for a short time gave the system time to sort its internals and be ready for input again? shrug (a kid's reasoning)

When you can't type the umlauts the correct way is using an additional e after the vowel, like this: Vorfuehreffekt. One more example: "schoen" instead of "schön" and not "schon".

Vorfuhreffekt is different and just sounds wrong. The German ear tries to understand this like this: "the effect of having gone ahead", but in German you don't conjugate substantives, so using the past of "fahren" ("fuhr") doesn't work here. This is irritating, at least for me.

For "schön" and "schon" however it does really matter because these words are in English "beautiful" and "already".

The former is my family name, and unfortunately following our immigration to the U.S. many people here interpret it as two separate syllables!

Herzliches Beileid!

Danke!

I just realized that my post could be interpreted as suggesting that I personally had immigrated to the U.S. from Germany. In fact, my grandfather did. But the two-syllable interpretation has affected every subsequent generation.

Well depends... When you want to present a bug and it does not show up again.

It happens all the time to people asking me for help with their computers. They are a lot more annoyed by this than me.

That's just normal Vorführeffektsgewöhnungsgelassenheit, i.e. you being chill about it because you're already used to the Vorführeffekt.

Are those fantastically long German composite words easy to read for native speakers or is part of the pleasure having to stop and squint?

i learned a bunch of German years ago, and while i don't really know what the particular components mean, it's pretty easy for me to decompose the word into parts. do you see a "ge-" or a "be-"? its probably the beginning of a verb; an "-ung" or "-eit" are usually noun endings; etc. and this happens pretty much subconsciously

I'd guess it's similar to using a lot of English words to make compound nouns, except it is slightly worse to read, so if the word is new you'd usually slow down a bit to properly parse it.

On the upside, you don't have to guess where the compound noun ends end the rest of the sentence starts, which can also cost time or cost confusion.

It's not a big deal if you know each individual word but if you don't then it's hell.

I did a google search for that long word, and it shows how fast google's index updates.

I still can't believe they used to wear suits for tech demos.

No, typically you've set up everything for failing. Then you show it in front of customer support, to demonstrate the problem. The thing then beautifully works the first time. That's still the Vorführeffekt.

Definition incomplete. It's also used for the other way around. like when something broke, you call the help desk. Technician shows up and it works then!

It's not used in this case.

"Vorführeffekt" can be used in this situation, but it's broader and not specific enough to describe exactly what the question is asking for.

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