Tuesday, October 31, 2017

error message - Should I show the troll that I know he's trolling?


I'm building an online store that has many features and functions.



Whenever a user interacts with the site a notification is shown.


These notifications should give the user a response to his action and tell him whether the action was successful or not and also if it wasn't successful tell him what went wrong.


I also considered and implemented control functions that check if the user tries to harm the application, other users or the database. If this is the case I would like to give the user a notification that shows him that I do know what he's doing and leave him with the feeling that he should rather stop now because "we see and know every step he takes".


Examples:




  • Contact Form: The user has to fill in his information such as his email address, full name and a message,



    • if he doesn't fill in a certain field of the form the notification "please fill in your [name of the empty field]"

    • if the user leaves all the fields empty and just hits the submit button the notification says "please don't send us any empty contact forms"





  • Feedback Form: The user has to write a message, email address & name are optional



    • if he doesn't fill in the message field, he'll get the notification "please write a message"

    • if he fills in the email field with an invalid email address (e.g. asdf) the notification says "Either give us a real email address or just leave the field empty"





  • Deleting profile information: The user can save information about himself. He's able to edit and delete his profile



    • if the user tries to delete a profile that does not belong to him the notification says "you can't delete other users' profiles, don't try this again!"




  • etc. ...




I like the nature of these notification messages but am not sure whether they are appropriate and useful, especially if for any reason a user that hasn't really tried to harm the system gets to read a rather impolite message.



Do you consider such notification messages useful?


What do you think could be problems I have to face if I use this kind of notification messages?


What would be a good alternative to such notification messages?





First: Thank you for your time, thoughts and help!


I'd like to add, that the given examples are by no means all notification messages/places where notifications occur. I do know, that (as msparer and Lego Stormtroopers have pointed out) the described behaviour is not actually trolling. Still there are many other functions where trolls could have a little fling (chat, product review, support, etc.).


I fully agree with what Racheet said, that there is no actual benefit in blaming the user, especially if someone accidentally triggers a notification message that was designed for malicious users.


I also absolutely love how the_lotus handles trolls and will definitely create and implement something similar!




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