Should error messages apologize? | Hacker News Reader

Should error messages apologize?

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57 pointstsudot45 comments

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.

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

The fourth repetition: "I pity da fool who don't take the ticket!"

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).

The machine didn't write that phrase though - a human did.

Sure, and if I were ever to interact with that human directly, I'd use my politeness. I feel like manners should be something special just for us humans.

That's a very shallow way of looking at things. It's not about manners, it's about perceived bossy tone being subconsciously associated with the machine's owner.

You get that "scan your credit card, human" and you will leave the store with a fuzzy feeling that something was off, someone was rude to you. While some people will try and analyze it, most - won't. They will simply pin this on the shop as a company. Does the company need that? Nope, it doesn't. Hence the "please."

You are quite free to be impolite to the machine.

I'd prefer that the machines continue to be polite toward me, if for no other reason, because that makes it easier to ignore the interface, and push it into the background.

However, the company gives a shit about their bottom line. It has been proven that their customers - humans - react positively to humanized language and as a result this is just a natural outcome in markets where the bottom line is important (read:all).

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.

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.

I didn't say I agree with it, I was just giving you the back story :-) Personally I'd prefer it say something like "Brain the size of a planet and they have me scanning groceries, really, like I care about your groceries? Sure if you hold them up I'll have a look but really how about a nice game a 3D chess or a number factoring contest.." but that is because I recognize that I am amused by irony :-)

That said, perhaps the most correct thing it could do is use visual iconography and not say anything. I'm sure the non-english speakers don't really "get" what it is saying but they have learned which steps go after each utterance.

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.

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

"The machine does not need to affirm its lower status. It's a machine."

I think many 'normal' users need frequent reminders about that lower status. Many users, when confronted with a message such as "could not find file 'foo'", will feel that that is their fault.

On the flip-side, a machine that simply gives commands without saying please may be perceived by some as affirming its higher status. Or, at least, this may be the designer's concern.

It feels strange to mix "please" with such a direct imperative. In fact it comes across as the opposite, like an authority is talking down to you. They could at least use the polite construction, "Would you please scan your item now." It would feel more like a request.

There's another piece of it which is tone.

If you were standing at a checkout and the cashier wanted you to swipe your own card, he/she might say, "scan your card please".

But, while the words read as an imperative statement or command, you'd probably notice that the intonation is one akin to a question. For instance, the voice would rise at the end, as in inquiry.

English sorry and please are wildcards and they got diluted to extent that non-native english speaking countries use it for a light form of an apology.

I agree that constantly repeating please is a bad UX instead of "Thank you for shopping...." it could display "Thanks. Have a nice day!"

I guess someday the machine will be sophisticated enough to recognize your preference, and adjust accordingly:

    "That PIN code isn't valid, s**thead. Try not to 
     f**k it up this time."

What a wonderful future it will be! ;-)

The machines in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy had "Genuine People Personalities", a big feature of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

Maybe with computer error messages there should be different message translations sent out based on browser capabilities and geographical location.

Without the "Please" the phrase sounds like an order. You don't really want a terminal ordering/telling you what to do.

The "Please" reframes it into a request.

Never underestimate the power of language. Yes, we know it's a pre-recorded message, but we also know a human wrote those words. I'd wager that a self-checkout that barked out commands without ever saying please would sound rude, robotic and harsh to users.

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."

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.

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.

Do you control the machine? Well ok then, you're the superior. Does the machine control you? Thats a little different, and there have been many instances of this in our lives for years.

"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.

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...

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

https://github.com/asdfasdfasdfb

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If written by a Canadian, yes they should.

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