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Depends on the target market. I personally would love to see exception logs every time a page 500s, but (1) it’s a security risk, (2) It’s a bad idea for your a
by Jorge1o1 8y ago
Depends on the target market. I personally would love to see exception logs every time a page 500s, but (1) it’s a security risk, (2) It’s a bad idea for your average user.
Your Average Joe would be confused when they see the error description. And if it has one of those good-on-paper/bad-in-practice phrases like “contact our webmaster” it’s even worse.
They’ll start calling you or writing emails, thinking that they’re helping but the conversation is something like:
I’m trying to buy a sweater for my grandkids, there’s 5 of them. Jimmy is 6 years old ... So when I got to the sweaters page I typed in: “turtleneck”
Then they start asking — no, DEMANDING, explanations they won’t understand. So how do you explain to Joe that you were in the middle of a DB migration?
And even if you just have a bot answer his email or whatever, then why did you even bother writing the bot if it’s not a human reading it?
So I think oftentimes the best solution is a cute lil dino saying “try refreshing, and if not, go to our homepage and try again.”
- saagarjha 8y agoI don’t like keeping my users in the dark, no matter how “untechnical” they are; it makes me feel like I don’t respect them enough to understand, even at a high level, what’s going on. In your case, usually I’d say something like “We’re having issues with our database right now; please try refreshing or going to the home page. If this happens again, you can contact support at support@”. So they have a general idea of what went wrong, which they can mention when contacting support (if I get a bunch of these, maybe the database migration isn’t going well?) and they don’t feel like I’m treating them like a child. More technical users can try to stay away from operations that will touch the database, or optionally take a look at the logs that I hide behind a “details” button.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y agoWhat if they are a child?
- whatshisface 8y agoChildren don't have to be treated like adults to be happy, but in this case I don't see what you or they could gain by treating them differently.
- starbeast 8y agoThen you can be more technical.