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This description rang pretty true for me. My mother is much, much better about it now, but practically all of my tech support with her for a while was little more than stopping her from closing error messages immediately, then just asking her to read them. At times I was almost impressed with how quickly and accurately she could click the Cancel button.

> I think one of the reasons I find computers relatively easy is that I compulsively read whatever you put in front of me.

Telling my mom this is what eventually got her to read error messages instead of closing them. She had to learn not to close them and then, separately, learn to also read them. I'll admit there were times where I was on the verge of crying out of frustration, begging her to "please just read the screen" because she would leave the error, but then still not actually read it and go with:

Me: "What does it say?"

Mom: "I don't know."

So glad things are better, now.

I think one of the reasons I find computers relatively easy is that I compulsively read whatever you put in front of me. I always read cereal boxes when I was a kid, even the non-kid cereal boxes that were all about colon health and fiber. But even I get this blindness sometimes, especially when I'm writing code and running builds and tests and trying to work quickly and efficiently. I'll get hung up on something for ten minutes where the answer is literally spelled out for me in front of my face.

This is an astute observation.

I also didn't know that other kids read cereal boxes like that... I thought it was just me!

There's a fair number of them. If there are any parents here with children like that, try to see if you can get them introduced to local trivia competitions such as Science Bowl–it's an invaluable skill that will put you leagues ahead of anyone else since they will never be able to replicate your child's "years of studying".

I totally did this, and I found reading labels even more fun in Canada because they were also in French, and I didn't know any French!

There are likely some generational differences here... I definitely read even the nutritional information on the cereal boxes but it was because there was nothing whatsoever else to do during breakfast. If I had a smart phone I'd find something better to read.

Another datapoint for developer and also reading all the cereal boxes.

Or even just signs when driving down the highway. I can't help but read everything.

We need some data points from non-developers now.

UX designer here who read all the cereal boxes. Still a compulsive reader, and the internet makes this a dangerous trait.

Engineering student. Compulsive reader of all text within eyesight.

Same here.

It took me the longest time to realize that for some people reading is something that doesn't happen until they choose to do it.

The other day my wife clicks "Save" in word. A folder comes up that she previously saved to. She types in a new file name.

Then says "hey hon, It won't let me save."

I see the error. Can't access disk. Immediately I think, well I replaced the HDD with and SSD, so that's probably not the problem. I look at the folder she's accessing, everything looks normal. It shows a bunch of other files in it. I go up a folder and back into the folder, and everything looks great, click Save - > same error again.

Finally I go to my computer -> and path my way back all the way into the same folder, click Save. It works and she says thank you!

And I'm thinking, what the fuck that shouldn't have fixed it.. walking away dumbfounded. No problem since, there's nothing wrong with the disk she's been using the computer for days since. It was literally a bug in word's specialized save dialog.

I wonder if it was a bug in the way Windows handles "libraries". Like going to "documents" instead of going to c:\users\blah\documents. In fact I bet that's what it was. Maybe it thinks a USB stick is part of the "Documents" library or something.

Non-english Windows has magic names for program, downloads, documents etc folders.

I see alot of apps using hardcoded paths since they create a "downloads" folder and save stuff to it.

Alot of bugs are exposed in a non US-eng install.

I mostly run into this with people terrified of pressing the wrong thing and breaking the computer. Might be a little like how the first thing you do when you're learning to, say, kayak is to flip the boat so that you're confident you can recover from the worst case scenario.

I have broken so many computers in my life and repaired them that I am not very worried about pressing the wrong thing because I am confident I can recover from a mistake. Someone who has never repaired their own computer runs an unknown (to them) risk of being wrong that would force them to take their computer to an actual store and the hard drive probably being erased without asking.

Always reading the dialog boxes is usually a very good idea, but I've also seen that strategy backfire.

Specifically, I was once trying to help a CS professor register a new domain name. This was at some low-cost registrar and there were 6 pages of upsells on the way to checkout. For whatever reason, he was definitely taking his time reading the entire pitch, and eventually I had to step in and click 'next' several times. "No, you don't need a new virus scanner as part of your domain name purchase. No you don't need a company to submit your new domain name to search engines. No you don't need SEO services. ..."

Chances are it you actually read though the terms and conditions before clicking the checkbox, your session will have timed out and you'll have to start over.

> I compulsively read whatever you put in front of me

I'm going through a contract-heavy legal process right now, and it is amazing how strongly the agents/lawyers/etc. involved in the process clearly expect me to just sign without reading. Obviously they're not pressuring me not to read it, but the implied expectations of time/effort that it should take is much less than necessary.

Yep, I always have this with mortgages. People have been pretty good about agreeing to send me the documents the night before so that I can actually read them. But I also at least skim them before signing to make sure they say the same thing they did the night before. I haven't found anything objectionable, so maybe the rational thing to do would actually be to just do what everyone else does and sign based on what the person says they say.

Did you know that hospitals and urgent care providers are now having you sign agreements you don't even see? They say "ok, you need to sign the general release"..."now you need to sign that we can bill your insurance company"... and it's entirely verbal/on faith. You're just signing an electronic pad that displays no information.

Any lawyers around who could discuss how enforceable this kind of thing is(n't)? I'd assume at the least it's treated like a contract of adhesion -- what about how it's handled compared to verbal contracts?

The ones I say explicitly say that you're signature acknowledges that you've read the policy. You have to ask to see it before signing. It feels skeevy to me to be sure but honestly it's not all that different from signing something you have been given but still haven't read.

Edit to add: also, I've seen this in more places than just health care.

Nope. No verbal or written statement about a written policy being read or existing. I don't know what happens if you demand to see one, but one isn't offered at all. There's no fine print on the display saying you have read anything. It's just verbally "sign for this" and you do. Yet they don't condense it down to one signature.

I complained and was ignored in the same way people are ignored when they complain about the wait in the ER or ask how much treatment will cost.

See I find this an example of a user being lazy, and I experience this frequently. They are not even bothering to read what the computer is saying, just giving up and knowing/assuming that you will figure it out. They don't value your time, and cannot be bothered to expend the slightest effort to solve their own problem.

It is easy for those who are comfortable with computers to read an error message then determine whether we can solve the problem on our own or request support.

For people who are not comfortable with computers, they just see an error message and expect it to be something that they cannot handle.

Which is dumb. 80% of error messages are likely something they are perfectly equiped to handle.

Perhaps, but it is that 20% of error messages that leave people believing that they are unable to handle the other 80%.

Part of the problem is how error messages are presented. A lot of software uses tools like modal dialog boxes to present everything from "a file with that name already exists" to "the file cannot be written". The former can easily be handled. The latter may involve a call to technical support (and part of the reason for that is the ambiguity of the error message).

I always have the same problem with novice developers too --

"Hi"

?

"I have an error"

What error?

"It won't compile"

Whats the error message?

"Function lib.X not found"

Did you import the library?

"No"

Import it

"It worked"

Most everyone seems to be trained to ignore error messages, regardless of background. Expecting them to go the next step and google the error is a lost cause, regardless of background. Even 5yr devs sometimes need to be taught this... I'm still not clear why, but it feels like people are being trained to use computers this way -- i just can't figure out when, why and who's doing this mis-training

This is likely because many error messages are not helpful. Blame all the developers who just put an error code in their error messages and called it a day.

I'm the same way. Modern UI is often (seemingly) purposely obtuse. It's maddening. It (the UI) doesn't seem to respect people who read the information given to them by actually presenting that information. I shouldn't have to click through a dozen links to get to documentation.

A big frustration of mine is sites/apps that bury their support info. If I need support, I'd like support. Expose your FAQ to me, point me towards some forums, but don't bury the actual contact info somewhere like the footer, or worse, omit it completely. If I type my problem into the supplied form and the chatbot that opens up asks me to type that info again (often after a redirect where the session info gets overwritten so that I can't even copy-paste my already written text) I'm much more likely to be unnecessarily rude to the support person in the other side... Assuming it's a person and not the aforementioned chatbot.

You're being overly generous. If some feature that usually works suddenly stops working and now there's some text on the screen instead, and you go all the way to ringing up a family member for help without even reading the text then I struggle to call that anything other than "stupid and lazy".

Don't think for a second that IT professionals are any better.

You have no idea how many times I've seen the RDP certificate warning: "Click here to never show this again."

Nope, no. Nobody but me ticks that checkbox. NOBODY. It's infuriating.

That, and the VMware vSphere first-time tab that "explains what a cluster is". Click here to close and never show again.

Nope. Every time I look over the shoulder of a dedicated, full-time, VMware-certificate ESXi cluster administrator... there it is. The certificate warning. The first-time popup. Every time.

I'm one of those people that never checks the "click here to never show this again" box on RDP cert warnings so I'll chime in.

In my mind, I know I really should manually grab a copy of the cert from work so I'm actually certain I'm not being MITM'd, but on the other hand I know the likelihood of that being the case is pretty darn low and I'm lazy so I don't. But I make sure that warning keeps popping up because I don't want to forget that I'm doing something dangerous.

This method is much, much worse for security. It's literally the worst possible thing that you could do.

The easy way is decently secure: if you tick the checkbox, it memorises the certificate serial number for you, the same as if you had manually trusted a self-signed cert. Any change to the certificate will show the warning again. This is comparable to trusting an SSH certificate the first time you connect to a host with Putty.

The best way is to issue RDP Certificates from an Enterprise PKI: They're free, you never get warning popups ever again, and they're secure.

Your method means that if the certificate changes (due to a MitM attack), you won't notice. The warning looks the same with a new certificate as an old certificate that you didn't choose to trust. You're 100% vulnerable and you've both hidden an a warning for an actual attack and also trained yourself to ignore all such warnings.

Thanks. I will rectify this now :)

> The easy way is decently secure: if you tick the checkbox, it memorises the certificate serial number for you, the same as if you had manually trusted a self-signed cert. Any change to the certificate will show the warning again. This is comparable to trusting an SSH certificate the first time you connect to a host with Putty.

Then it should say so.

"Click here to never show this again"—never show for this certificate? For this connection? For any connection?

Be clear and specific, even if it takes three more words.

This is so spot on. My family tech support goes EXACTLY like this. Once I get them to actually articulate the issue I usually just google it and after I help them I send them the google search.

Basically me, when I tell my IT colleagues that if they just run "git status" in 99% of the cases it will tell them what to do if something didn't work "magically"...