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Subject:Re: Doc. departments in the Corporate Org. Chart From:Christine -dot- Anameier -at- seagate -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 27 Dec 2000 11:28:40 -0600
Scott Turner wrote:
> Wait until you have to explain why you included an error message taken
> from the BBC series "Dr. Who"
>
> "Pish posh, Romana. What could possibly go wrong?"
Erm... maybe I'm being humor-impaired today, but why on earth would I want
to include an error message taken from Doctor Who?? (I assume you aren't
advocating such an action. I think "funny" error messages are written to
assuage the boredom of the programmer or writer, not to amuse the user, who
will not be in a receptive mood. Can you picture the user saying "the
application crashed and I lost two hours of work... but the error message
is so charmingly quirky, I just can't get upset"?)
> Or my personal favorite, a Help file with an active help link to a Quit
> button, which read "Duh".
I've seen variations on that theme before, but to me, the irony of it is
that it pokes fun at the user-- when the tech writer is the one making
"Duh"-quality help files. ("Well, I have this screen capture and I put
hotspots on all the screen elements, and I have this hotspot on the Quit
button, so I better say something about what the Quit button does..." --
techwriter autopilot.)
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