Be careful of vendor scripts, ate my money and didn't register a sale

[Phil Deakins]

You exaggerated it by saying, "What's absurd is expecting programmers to add an "Are you sure?" confirmation to every stupid button". That was gross exaggeration.

 

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Gadget Portal wrote:

As for gifting a blank name, the scripter there should have at least had it check to make sure it could actually find said name before proceeding, no confirmation needed.

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There you are then. We agree that the script's programmer is the one who is at fault. The programme could deal with it in a number of ways, one of which is asking for confirmation; e.g. "You have selected to send this item as a gift, but you haven't provided a name, and nobody will receive it. Are you sure you want to pay now?" Personally, I would do it differently, because nobody is going to pay in that circumstance.

My thinking is that the vendor scipt may be common, and in many vendors. This thread provides a useful warning for anyone who clicks the Gift button by mistake.

[Sassy Romano]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

 the OP posted to provide a warning about vendors and Gift button mistakes. The problem may be unique to a particular store or the faulty script may be common in vendors, so the OP's warning benefits everyone here. His objective has been fulfilled to the possible future benefit of all who read it. The OP did everyone here a favour.

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That's the part I disagree with, his warning should have been to advise people to be sure to use the vendor properly and not to make a blanket statement to avoid a scripted vendor gift function.

Regardless, the root cause remains with the badly written script.

[Phil Deakins]

I don't read the OP that way. I don't see where he suggests avoiding the 'gift' function. To me it reads that we should take care that we really do mean 'gift' when we click that button. And also, if we do click it by mistake, back off entirely - just in case. That's what I take for his original post, anyway.

[Sassy Romano]

I think he was pretty succinct!

"Just a warning for people shopping in places where they use vendor scripts instead of the simple right click -> buy. Don't use the stupid "buy as gift" option"

My vendors work fine, they don't do that, they even refund duplicate purchases automatically, I don't want money for peoples mistakes.

[Phil Deakins]

Hmm. You may be right. His punctuation isn't very good at that point in his post. The sentence could mean, "Don't use the stupid "buy as gift" option if you accidentally make a typo, type wrong name, or simply leave it blank", but it's more likely to mean "Don't use the stupid "buy as gift" option. If you accidentally make a typo, type wrong name, or simply leave it blank, you're screwed". I think I'll adopt your understanding of it, in which case, I'll agree with you that he shouldn't be warning people not to use the Gift option.

[Phil Deakins]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

My vendors work fine, they don't do that, they even refund duplicate purchases automatically, I don't want money for peoples mistakes.

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I wrote my own vendor scripts. I never included a gift option so this problem would never occur. What I have been known to do, though, is go after, and refund, those who bought 3 or 4 individual dining chairs, when they could have bought a boxed set of 3 or 4 significantly cheaper. Like you, I have no desire to profit from other people's mistakes or oversights.

[Rolig Loon]

Whether the OP's post was prompted by an interaction with a specific merchant's vendor or whether it is a distillation of experiences with vendors in general, my basic point still stands.  As our grandmothers would have said, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."  The tone and style of the OP's post was confrontational, rather than informational and constructive.  Several of the responses here have also been a bit over the top, reacting as much to the OP's similar style in previous threads as to this one.  It just seems to me that there are better way to discuss a legitimate concern than to use charged language and innuendo that serve no purpose but to divide people into factions.

[Phil Deakins]

Yes, the OP could have posted in a 'calmer' manner, but he didn't name anyone or a store, and he did inform us that such a problem exists, which is to our benefit. As I said earlier, I'm not familiar with the OP, so I've no idea about his previous posts. I'm just taking this thread at face value. If I knew that he is a person who is prone to shooting first, my post would probably have said the same things but not necessarily in such calm and reasoned way. If I'd posted at all, that is

[Codex Alpha]

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Gadget Portal wrote:

What's absurd is expecting programmers to add an "Are you sure?" confirmation to every stupid button. For one, if you're dumb, you're gonna find a way to break it no matter what the designer does.

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Gadget Portal wrote:

I'm not exaggerating anything. The post I replied to added land renewals, freebies, and more to the list. Pretty soon we'd have to have confirmations on everything.

As for gifting a blank name, the scripter there should have at least had it check to make sure it could actually find said name before proceeding, no confirmation needed.

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I believe what I said was..

"With every sensitive transaction, you check (for errors in submission "You have not entered a name/amount/etc") and double-check ("Are you sure you want to pay [Name] $100L?)"

This is not EVERY button. This is on the important buttons. This is just a silly convo anyway, as you probably have never taken a UI/UX course, or a programming course, or even a course that had you coding concerning sensitive systems, where ERROR CHECKING IS THE NORM AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WHEN DEALING WITH SENSITIVE DATA.

Because then you wouldn't even be arguing this point, as it is best practice.

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Rolig Loon wrote:

Whether the OP's post was prompted by an interaction with a specific merchant's vendor or whether it is a distillation of experiences with vendors in general, my basic point still stands.  As our grandmothers would have said, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."  The tone and style of the OP's post was confrontational, rather than informational and constructive.  Several of the responses here have also been a bit over the top, reacting as much to the OP's similar style in previous threads as to this one.  It just seems to me that there are better way to discuss a legitimate concern than to use charged language and innuendo that serve no purpose but to divide people into factions.

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Although I agree with your perspective, you don't shoot the messenger because you don't like the tone of his voice, nor can you negate the content of the message for  the same. Instead of reacting to someone's percieved (because that is what it is) tone or intent, learn to read things on the internet do to the content, and reply to that instead. Or not.

That will keep the conversations on point, and not just spiraling into off-topic convos of someone's posting style, tone, use of words, etc.

[Rolig Loon]

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entity0x wrote:

[ .... ] Although I agree with your perspective, you don't shoot the messenger because you don't like the tone of his voice, nor can you negate the content of the message for  the same. Instead of reacting to someone's percieved (because that is what it is) tone or intent, learn to read things on the internet do to the content, and reply to that instead. Or not.

That will keep the conversations on point, and not just spiraling into off-topic convos of someone's posting style, tone, use of words, etc.

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 Quite so.  Civility applies to all sides of any conversation.  Once anybody starts down the road of hyperbole and ugly language, it's hard to keep a discussion on track.  Tone and style do make a difference, and messengers do tend to get shot in the crossfire.  :smileywink:

[Codex Alpha]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

Tone and style do make a difference, and messengers do tend to get shot in the crossfire.  :smileywink:

 

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Only to you, and here we are.. off topic. Good job.

[HarrisonMcKenzie]

The thing with the whole "it's the programmer's fault" argument is this: the programmer of the script is probably not a professional programmer. All the coulds and shoulds in the world aren't going to change that. Should the programmer write in a failsafe function in case the dialogue window is left blank? Yes. Did they? No. Why? Maybe the programmer didn't realize they had to. How many scripters in SL have a QA department to bruteforce their scripts in hopes of finding weird bugs? How many just do a few test transactions and call it good enough? Should the programmer have spent more time testing this and programming failsafes? Absolutely, if they are observing professional best-practices. Did they? No.

 

Thus, the finger points bad to the user, unfortunately. Again, the script did exactly what it was told. It doesn't know that it shouldn't charge when user name "" wants the item. It doesn't know that this is an invalid name. The seller probably doesn't have control over this, and I'm betting the programmer didn't follow those best practices. But the user can observe their best practices, which includes making informed decision and using effective communication when things go wrong. The user can't control how tthe script works or if the programmer observed best practices, but they can control their actions.

[Phil Deakins]

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HarrisonMcKenzie wrote:

The thing with the whole "it's the programmer's fault" argument is this: the programmer of the script is probably not a professional programmer. All the coulds and shoulds in the world aren't going to change that. Should the programmer write in a failsafe function in case the dialogue window is left blank? Yes. Did they? No. Why? Maybe the programmer didn't realize they had to. How many scripters in SL have a QA department to bruteforce their scripts in hopes of finding weird bugs? How many just do a few test transactions and call it good enough? Should the programmer have spent more time testing this and programming failsafes? Absolutely, if they are observing professional best-practices. Did they? No.

 

Thus, the finger points bad to the user,

unfortunately. Again, the script did exactly what it was told. It doesn't know that it shouldn't charge when user name "" wants the item. It doesn't know that this is an invalid name. The seller probably doesn't have control over this, and I'm betting the programmer didn't follow those best practices. But the user can observe their best practices, which includes making informed decision and using effective communication when things go wrong. The user can't control how tthe script works or if the programmer observed best practices, but they can control their actions.

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No it doesn't. And the reason it doesn't is described very well in your first paragraph.

Almost all of those who write scripts in SL are not professional programmers, as you rightly point out, but that doesn't excuse any of them from writing a script that takes the money without having anyone to send the item to. It doesn't take a professional, or even an experienced, programmer to realise that, when the Gift button is clicked, a name is required, and that it's not optional. If no name is provided, then don't take the money. Any beginner programmer would realise that whilst writing the programme - except the one who actually wrote it in this case. Anyone who is capable of writing the vendor script has the intelligence to know that it should not take money when no name is provided. It doesn't take a professional programmer to come up with that.