Error’d: Sentinel Headline

When faced with an information system lacking sufficient richness
to permit its users to express all of the necessary data states,
human beings will innovate. In other words, they will find creative
ways to bend the system to their will, usually (but not
always) inconsequentially.

In the early days of information
systems, even before electronic computers, we found users choosing
to insert
various out-of-bounds values into data
fields to represent states such as “I don’t know the true value for
this item” or “It is impossible accurately state the true value of
this item because of faulty constraint being applied to the input mechanism”
or other such notions.

This practice carried on into the computing age, so that now, numeric
fields will often contain values of 9999 or 99999999. Taxpayer numbers
will be listed as 000-00-0000 or any other repetition of the same
digit or simple sequences. Requirements to enter names collected
John Does. Now we also see a fair share of Disney characters.

Programmers then try to make their systems idiot-proof, with the
obvious and entirely predictable results.

The mere fact
that these inventions exist at all
is entirely due to the ommission of mechanisms
for the metacommentary that we all know perfectly
well is sometimes necessary. But rather than provide those,
it’s easier to wave our hands and pretend
that these unwanted states won’t exist, can be ignored, can be glossed over.
“Relax” they’ll tell you. “It probably won’t ever happen.”
“If it does happen, it won’t matter.” “Don’t lose your head over it.”

The Beast in Black
certainly isn’t inclined to cover up an errant sentinel.
“For that price, it had better be a
genuine Louis XVI pillow from 21-January-1793.” A La Lanterne!

Daniel D.
doubled up on Error’ds for us.
“Do you need the error details? Yes, please.”

And again with an alert notification oopsie.
“Google Analytics 4 never stops surprising us any given day with
how bugged it is. I call it an “Exclamation point undefined”. You
want more info? Just Google it… Oh wait.”
I do appreciate knowing who is responsible for the various bodges we are sent.
Thank you, Daniel.

“Dark pattern or dumb pattern?” wonders an anonymous
reader. I don’t think it’s very dark.

Finally,
Ian Campbell
found a data error that doesn’t look like
an intentional sentinel. But I’m not sure what this number represents.
It is not an integral power of 2. Says Ian,
“SendGrid has a pretty good free plan now with a daily limit of
nine quadrillion seven trillion one hundred ninety-nine billion
two hundred fifty-four million seven hundred forty thousand nine
hundred ninety-two.”

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