Warnings only work if the person receiving them is either capable of and motivated to do something about it, or capable of motivating the person/people capable

Warnings only work if the person receiving them is either capable of and motivated to do something about it, or capable of motivating the person/people capable of doing something about it. A weak warning that's just an entry in a scrolling console means nothing to end users and can be ignored by devs. A strong warning that comes out as a modal dialog can still be ignored by devs and then just annoys users. See the early era of Windows UAC for possibly the most widespread example of a strong warning added after the fact.