Adventures in UI usage.

[brooksmoses]

[Poll #1705972]
Hint: If you get it wrong, it helpfully reports, "L148: Your wireless number must contain 10 digits."

(I shall post the experimentally-determined answer in comments, for discussion purposes.)

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Also, this page is now the top Google result for "L148: Your wireless number must contain 10 digits." Note the timestamps. I am somewhat frightened.

[brooksmoses]

So, what did said wireless provider pick? The worst possible choice that still allowed me to log in: "contain 10 digits" apparently is meant to imply "and no punctuation", as 6505551212 was the only form that worked.

[bungo.livejournal.com]

I suppose the correct answer should have been (c) both of the above, with the web site silently dropping dashes, spaces, parentheses and other junk. "(650) 55-51 212". Not accepting your own example text is, well, uncool.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, Google scans LiveJournal hourly or so. And LJ posts tend to have pretty high Google ranks.

[redbird]

My actual provider has it set up with three little boxes, with room for 3, 3, and 4 digits; I guessed the no-hyphen form just because that setup will probably annoy more users.

[cobalt-00.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that I thought, "Let's see how far cynicism gets me!" - and I was right? ;) I can see many months of intuitive fixes in your future.

[argh128.livejournal.com]

You can configure your LJ, to disable google indexing by adding a robots file if you want.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, since it doesn't scan friends-locked stuff, I rather like it. If I post something publicly, I'm comfortable having random people see it.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I only guessed this because you asked the question -- if they're going to give an example, they should really give an example the way they want it.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I guessed the no-hyphen form on the theory that otherwise there would have been less to complain about.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

One thing: if the 6505551212 gets *that* error message, I believe the programmer may legally be beaten with a rubber hose no thicker around than your thumb[1][2].

[1] No, I don't really believe that. And I am trolling re: "rule of thumb".
[2] Don't take advice on legality of beating people from random weirdos you meet on the internet.