Unhelpful email bounce message

[+Optimist on the run]

I emailed a couple of users earlier, in response to their answers to an earthcache they'd found together. Afterwards I got the following email:

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but something went wrong on Geocaching.com.

 

Your email address is not part of this conversation.

Check your message and try again. Or visit the Message Center to reply to their message there. Or send a pigeon. Whatever works for you.

 

Sorry for the inconvenience. If the error is due to a bug in our system, our team is most likely already working on it.

 

Best,

Geocaching HQ

 

This doesn't tell me which message it was that failed, so I ended up having to send both again. Fortunately it was only a couple of messages sent today, not a couple of dozen, otherwise I'd have been very busy and 23 people would be deleting duplicate emails.

 

Could the (presumably automatic) response be altered to provide more details? And get rid of the pigeon - it wasn't funny.

[+T.D.M.22]

I found it funny...

[+wmpastor]

I found it funny...

 

I second that. The activity is casual caching, not investment banking.

[+K13]

Flippant comments in an error message are easily taken in a bad way. Probably related to the frustration of the moment and not to the lack of humor in the message.

 

If you don't receive this message, look for the smoke signals.

[+wmpastor]

Flippant comments in an error message are easily taken in a bad way. Probably related to the frustration of the moment and not to the lack of humor in the message.

 

If you don't receive this message, look for the smoke signals.

 

"Flippant" or "lighthearted"?

 

Context is everything. In an annoying snafu, someone could also be cheered up by a lighter comment.

 

Suppose you sent investment instructions to (say) Brown Brothers Harriman, the message was not received, and you lost $250,000. The partner suggested a pigeon. *Then* you'd have a right to be upset!

[+Manville Possum]

You should have used the new mwssage center.

[Keystone]

Were you attempting to reply to the message center message via email from the same account to which the message center message was sent, or from a different account?

[+Optimist on the run]

One was a reply to a message sent to me by the message centre, and I replied to it by email. The other was sent directly by email through the user's profile. I don't know which one caused the problem.

 

I don't use the message centre as I like to have a permanent record of all emails/messages I send and receive.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Flippant comments in an error message are easily taken in a bad way. Probably related to the frustration of the moment and not to the lack of humor in the message.

If you don't receive this message, look for the smoke signals.

 

"Flippant" or "lighthearted"?

 

Context is everything. In an annoying snafu, someone could also be cheered up by a lighter comment.

 

Suppose you sent investment instructions to (say) Brown Brothers Harriman, the message was not received, and you lost $250,000. The partner suggested a pigeon. *Then* you'd have a right to be upset!

 

A couple of years ago I was trying to make reservations for a vacation at Disneyworld and the disney site wasn't working quite right. I called the support number and described what wasn't working and was told that the site had a "magic moment" and was able to make all my reservations over the phone. I thought it was cute.

[Keystone]

One was a reply to a message sent to me by the message centre, and I replied to it by email. The other was sent directly by email through the user's profile. I don't know which one caused the problem.

 

I don't use the message centre as I like to have a permanent record of all emails/messages I send and receive.

The error message you received relates to the message center.

 

Did you reply to the message from the same email address as the registered address for your account? (That is, you don't employ any email forwarding strategies?)

[+Mudfrog]

I'm not an earthcache owner but if i were, i'd want finders to send their answers in an email. Would it be considered an ALR, to put on the earthcache page that people use email only?

Edited October 26, 2015 by Mudfrog

[+skramble]

I'm not an earthcache owner but if i were, i'd want finders to send their answers in an email. Would it be considered an ALR, to put on the earthcache page that people use email only?

 

No longer any need. Configure your notification preference to forward all MC messages to your email, et voila! And as long as you reply to any such forwarded messages from the same email address as is set as your default, you get email and the other end gets MC. Best of both worlds.

[Keystone]

I'm not an earthcache owner but if i were, i'd want finders to send their answers in an email. Would it be considered an ALR, to put on the earthcache page that people use email only?

Correct, that would be an impermissible requirement. An earthcache owner is required to accept answers submitted either by email or by the message center. But, with the enhancements made to "bridge the gap" between email fans and message center fans, hopefully this will not be a huge issue going forward, as correctly noted by skramble.

[+HCompleto]

Geocaching is a user friendly community, therefore the error message you recieve won't be as formal as it would be in other services. Geocaching likes to keep it in a conversational tone, and I believe that is the best way to reduce the gap between us, the users, and Geocaching/Groundspeak.

[+dprovan]

Geocaching is a user friendly community, therefore the error message you recieve won't be as formal as it would be in other services. Geocaching likes to keep it in a conversational tone, and I believe that is the best way to reduce the gap between us, the users, and Geocaching/Groundspeak.

Of course you have a point, but there are two concrete complaints here that go beyond merely being casual. The first is a common mistake made by people trying to create lighthearted error messages: they forgot that e-mail does not automatically carry context, so the error message must explain who the service thought the mail was being directed to and why it failed. In particular, it's not immediately obvious that the service would be trying to relate the message to the conversation via the e-mail's source address, so it should clearly say that it can't find a conversation with geocacher X from any account attached to the e-mail address y@z. It helps to include the message, not only to help identify it, but in case the sender has no other way to recover the contents of the message.

 

The other point -- being called "flippancy" -- is a little more subtle, but also a common mistake of those being causal: although the carrier pigeon line is clearly a joke, if you think about it you'll realize what it's saying is that using a truly ridiculous service -- pigeon -- would likely have worked better than using the message center. Not a good message to send about your service, even in jest.

[+K13]

Geocaching is a user friendly community, therefore the error message you recieve won't be as formal as it would be in other services. Geocaching likes to keep it in a conversational tone, and I believe that is the best way to reduce the gap between us, the users, and Geocaching/Groundspeak.

Of course you have a point, but there are two concrete complaints here that go beyond merely being casual. The first is a common mistake made by people trying to create lighthearted error messages: they forgot that e-mail does not automatically carry context, so the error message must explain who the service thought the mail was being directed to and why it failed. In particular, it's not immediately obvious that the service would be trying to relate the message to the conversation via the e-mail's source address, so it should clearly say that it can't find a conversation with geocacher X from any account attached to the e-mail address y@z. It helps to include the message, not only to help identify it, but in case the sender has no other way to recover the contents of the message.

 

The other point -- being called "flippancy" -- is a little more subtle, but also a common mistake of those being causal: although the carrier pigeon line is clearly a joke, if you think about it you'll realize what it's saying is that using a truly ridiculous service -- pigeon -- would likely have worked better than using the message center. Not a good message to send about your service, even in jest.

 

If there is a desire to add humor to the error message, why not make some type of frog-related quip, along with a pic of the G$ mascot, to drive home the brand, and be a bit self-depreciating at the same time.

[+ecanderson]

+1 to the above. Most replies got so lost in the weeds over the flavor of the message, they missed the OP's point that if there are multiple messages being sent in the same time frame, the receiver of that bounce message has no way to know which one bounced. THAT is something gc.com needs to consider dealing with.

[HiddenGnome]

Thank you to everyone who provided their feedback and to the OP for highlighting an area that we can improve. We are looking into ways to improve the error message in order to provide more context when you respond to a conversation that you are not a part of. This can sometimes happen when you have multiple email addresses coming into the same inbox and your "reply" email address does not match the primary email address of your geocaching account.

[+seandynamite]

+1 to the above. Most replies got so lost in the weeds over the flavor of the message, they missed the OP's point that if there are multiple messages being sent in the same time frame, the receiver of that bounce message has no way to know which one bounced. THAT is something gc.com needs to consider dealing with.

 

Consider that we also do not want to expose that information to anyone maliciously trying to get info from the conversation. Your sent box will let you know what it was in reference to.

[+EngPhil]

This can sometimes happen when you have multiple email addresses coming into the same inbox and your "reply" email address does not match the primary email address of your geocaching account.

Why limit it to the primary address? Any (validated) addresses should do...

[+dprovan]

+1 to the above. Most replies got so lost in the weeds over the flavor of the message, they missed the OP's point that if there are multiple messages being sent in the same time frame, the receiver of that bounce message has no way to know which one bounced. THAT is something gc.com needs to consider dealing with.

Consider that we also do not want to expose that information to anyone maliciously trying to get info from the conversation. Your sent box will let you know what it was in reference to.

Could you be more specific about what you're concerned about? I envision the response simply reflecting the information the sender provided -- the geocaching handle being responded to and the e-mail address the response was sent from -- so I don't see what information's being leaked.