This website: Feedback posting UI that is comprehensible and errors that are predictable and sane

This website: Feedback posting UI that is comprehensible and errors that are predictable and sane
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 Apr 07 2022
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I tried to post a new idea to Azure Virtual Desktop Feedback.  Some purple box showed up in the middle of my typing saying that my content was saved to auto-recover and that I should save regularly using the save button.  I cannot see any Save button anywhere on my screen.  This is a highly visible and distracting thing to show in the middle of typing that is absolutely useless.  I ignored it and finished typing my issue and pressed "Post".

 

I got another purple box saying I needed to correct some error and resubmit.  I didn't see any error, though there was still a purple box talking about auto recover data that I don't care about because I can see my post on the screen, whole and complete.  So I clicked Post again.  I got the same screen again saying there was some error I needed to fix.  I noticed a "Discard" link in the purple box that was telling me about saved auto-recover data that I didn't ask for and don't care about.  There is nothing else on my screen that could plausibly be described as "highlighted errors" so I clicked "Discard" and then tried "Post" again.

 

This time I got a purple box saying that my submission was not accepted because post flooding was detected: 2 posts within 20 seconds.  How can that be when according to everything I can see, I have posted a total of zero times?  Nothing anywhere in the previous screen said I should wait any particular amount of time before resubmitting my post after addressing the errors.  Fine.  I waited for a slow count of 20 and tried posting again.

 

This time I got another purple box saying that my submission was not accepted because post flooding was detected: 3 posts within 60 seconds.  This is like a child making up new rules to a game he is losing.  For something adults are intended to use, it is completely insane.  Whatever, I hate this site even more now.  So I wait for a slow count of 60 and try posting again.

 

This time I got another purple box saying that my submission was not accepted because the community received posts of a unique message more than 1 times within 3,600 seconds.  A unique message?  What does that even mean?  Is it complaining that I tried to post the same message because the previous attempt failed?  Of course I would do that!  That's what it's literally telling me to do, "try again"!  And it's not a "unique" message, it's a message that's identical to the one I just recently tried to post!  Why do I need to wait an hour?  At that point I really am likely to have something expire and I will lose the form data, so I need to copy it to an external text editor because this site seriously cannot be trusted to do anything at all.

 

I waited for a while (not an hour) while composing this post, and added a screenshot to the original post, then tried resubmitting just to see what would happen.  This time I got a message to "Correct the highlighted errors and try again" when there is literally nothing else highlighted on the screen as any kind of error.

 

Eventually I scrolled down to where the overflowing and until now apparently useless sidebar continued past the end of my post and its attachments, and noticed some tiny unobtrusive text in a dull color that was vaguely recognizable as red.  Apparently a Idea Labels is a required field?  Was that text even there the previous times I tried submitting the idea?  I'm not sure.  I know (because I checked) on a new post, there is nothing indicating that this field is required in order to post.  It looks exactly the same as the Idea Tags field below it, which is not required.  How about not putting required fields in a sidebar that is topped with totally unimportant general information at the top, and trails off below the fold with a bunch of irrelevant label suggestions?  How about letting folks know in advance what you're expecting them to do instead of just waiting until they think they're ready to take an action and telling them they have to start over?  What is this, the IRS?  The DMV?

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Microsoft

Kafkaesque is probably the word I was looking for.