The bullshit of outage language

Re:The bullshit of outage language by icey on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @05:28PM (#432838)

I call bullshit on this bullshit. When my systems go down, I AM sorry if it inconveniences my users. Why is this not OK? It beats the hell out of some stupid-ass whale picture.

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by jwilliams on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @07:16PM (#432959)

It beats the hell out of some stupid-ass whale picture.

But there is a difference between an outage on a free service and a paid service.

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by Tichy on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @06:39AM (#433499)

The reality is that is impossible to have 100% uptime, or at least it would be prohibitively expensive.

I think 37signals write about that themselves, and how they get away with 95% or something.

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by leohorie on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @06:54PM (#432935)

I see a certain dichotomy when it comes to the times when things go wrong: from an provider's point of view, downtime is an inconvenience because they now have to deal with an angry client, but from a client perspective, it looks more like the provider is irresponsible and incompetent, than a mere inconvenience (especially when there's money or job security on the line for the client party).

Then again, I think being cold and going for the "we apologize for any inconvenience" line can have some advantages over being personal - it implies you are more objective and reliable.

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by lnguyen on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @01:15AM (#433284)

If you're dealing with a system outage affecting hundreds or thousands of users, it's probably impossible to say anything else but generics ("inconvenience", "issues", etc.).

Just say what went wrong, how you're dealing with it now and in the future, and what you're doing to make it up to everyone that was (potentially) affected.

If someone writes back with a specific incident caused by the outage, you can address it directly then.

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by notauser on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @05:36PM (#432850)

All my emails tend to be formal in style even to people I know well - so I would never consider it appropriate to write 'really, really sorry about that guys' to customers.

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by gdee on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @06:59AM (#433512)

> All my emails tend to be formal in style even to people I know well Maybe you should queue this on your reading list: http://www.cluetrain.com

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Re:The bullshit of outage language by briansmith on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @09:47AM (#433644)

But, would it beat a dead horse?

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