Sarong

Your point about different levels of vocabulary is too complex. Isn’t it easier to write simpler statements?

How about something simple:
Title: “Action Failed”
Message: “An error occurred while trying to complete this action. Please try again later or contact customer support.”

The user is trying to do something and it didn’t work (In this case I had clicked the “like” button). That is all they need to know. Knowing it is a database error means nothing and adds nothing to their understanding.

Your analogy of the doctor visit falls apart under closer scrutiny. If I had a database inside me and it failed then yes I want to know the details of the database error. But we are not talking about something in my body. If it is a “black box” that I use I don’t need to know the details. Remember you are trying to create an experience that spans 200 million users. Having worked at Yahoo! and now at Netflix in this space, believe me only the simplest things work.

I actually have others that are worse than this one — like the one that explains there is a “transport error with ajax” … also from facebook.

Think of this in a medical context. You go in for some terrible cough, and the doctor tells you the following: “Just sign here, and we’ll put you to sleep. When you wake up, it’ll all be better.”
You don’t want them throwing around scientific terms, but you’d probably like to know if it’s a tumor or infection or an auto-immune disease.

(A better example would be the page any Firefox user gets when they visit an XML page with errors.)

Actually, I feel more and more like we need to build in tiny little invisible tests to determine the level of the user, so we can target their vocabulary needs. We should give them as much as they can understand, but no more.

I guess the main point was that techno-babble had made it into the dialog box at all. Techn-babble = geek speak. So I think the point was not whether I was picking on facebook or not, but to call attention to this anti-pattern to sensitize more people to the problem. Facebook on the whole does a good job considering the wide audience they have. I have many “good” examples from them as well.