Misleading error messages when registering

[andreas]

Due to a complaint towards me from a user, I've been made aware of a misleading error message in this forum when registering as NEW user.

Well, I logged out and pretended to be completely new here.
For registering, I used a Yahoo.com address.
Remember, I'm a new user here, and I'm absolutely clueless of anything.

[andreas]

Now THIS happened...

@RCK: Don't you agree that this error message suggests that the *user* is banned from this forum?

That's what this user told me: "I'm banned from this forum, but I don't know what I've done wrong."
Poor boy!

Seriously, I suggest that you could be a little more specific here and tell the user to use another mail provider or something, because these providers usually used for mass-spamming are banned.

Agree everybody?

[Chuckles]

I agree that the message could certainly be a lot more specific to make it clear that the ban was on the use of email addresses from that domain, rather than a ban on the user. Maybe something to the effect of:

"Due to the abuses by spammers of e-mail addresses belonging to the specified domain (yahoo.com), we regret that the use of all e-mail addresses from this domain has been banned. Please try again using a different valid e-mail address, or contact the administrator for additional information."

Better?

[woody57]

If so numbers here will be slightly depleted



ME for one


Or is this some subtle plot to get me to register with MSN ?



And how much are M$ paying you ?


AS IF lol

[andreas]

Originally posted by Chuckles
"Due to the abuses by spammers of e-mail addresses belonging to the specified domain (yahoo.com), we regret that the use of all e-mail addresses from this domain has been banned. Please try again using a different valid e-mail address, or contact the administrator for additional information."

Better?

Perfect!

I do know why I would pass the refinement of wording to the real experts here.
With my trashy English, this would probably have become twice as long as yours

[Djay]

how about...

"yo LaMer, teh email adreesss supllied is cr@p...u n0t 1773 enuf"

[Chuckles]

Originally posted by andreas
Perfect!

I do know why I would pass the refinement of wording to the real experts here.
With my trashy English, this would probably have become twice as long as yours

Thanks! Its funny, because if I were trying to explain the reasons why an e-mail address had been banned in a post, my tendency to get long winded would probably result in a MUCH longer explanation, though it wouldn't be any more informative than this is. It took a supreme effort of will on my part to shorten it this much, but years of programming has taught me that if you give the user an error message that requires them to do much reading, most users won't read the message at all, and that wouldn't really be much of an improvement.

[andreas]

hehe - good point