ronny.haryan.to » Problem Solving http://ronny.haryan.to Print: $9.50 -- Online: free Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:05:28 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Asking the Wrong Question http://ronny.haryan.to/archives/2006/01/03/asking-the-wrong-question/ http://ronny.haryan.to/archives/2006/01/03/asking-the-wrong-question/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2006 04:44:45 +0000 ronny http://ronny.haryan.to/?p=91 Upon encountering weird messages in their server logfiles, someone asked “How do you make these error messages stop showing up in the logfiles?”

I think that’s just not the right question to ask.

Error messages are there to help inform the user that there might be something wrong. It’s analogous to somebody screaming “Fire! Fire!” in a quiet neighbourhood. Instead of wondering how to make them stop screaming, it would be better to understand what it is they are screaming about, and why, just in case there actually is a real danger. Don’t you agree?

Average Joe users tend to ignore error messages as if the error messages are created just to make it more complicated and look more techie. Now, I agree that some error messages are cryptic and leave a lot of room for improvements so that they can be useful to average joe users. However, system administrators should be more willing to investigate the error messages further and try to understand what’s happening instead of trying to ignore the messages. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to try to paste the error message verbatim in Google.

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