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We have a beta tester who came upon a gnarly little issue our software has when interacting with Word. It has to do with some weird and useless hidden codes in Word which are harmless until you try to use our product with it in a very unusual way. Then all hell breaks loose. [As to why those hidden useless codes are still in Word, we don't know. You don't question these things. It's the Word way. 
]
Apparently this tester was the only one running into it. It's a real issue, but not enough to hold up a release thousands are waiting for. Since she did a good job stumbling on it and defining it we are going to address it; it will just be in our next release.
In the meantime Roger, our main programmer, showed her a little workaround that will keep her functioning until we program a fix.
Everything is good, right?
Wrong!
She comes back with, "But you need to WARN people about this!"
Roger replied that we would. We planned to put a note in the help files.
Not good enough. What about people who don't know to look in the help files?
We speculated what kind of warning she felt would be sufficient. Yelling from the rooftop? Taking out an ad during the Superbowl? Perhaps a big yellow notice in the package which beats the customer about the head until he reads it?
All kidding aside, Roger got back to her and kindly explained that the notice in help would be fine. We can't put a prominent warning for every possible problem in a prominent place in the package because all the user would see or hear would be warnings. And they'd kind of lose their effectiveness.
She wasn't convinced. This issue was URGENT (to only her) and people have to be WARNED!
So she took it upon herself to post a message on every AT message board warning people about the "problem" with our software.
At first we were kind of upset and wanted to respond, but Roger told us not to. After a bit we realized that half the people-who-had-to-be-warned didn't know what she was talking about and the other half didn't care.
It kind of took the wind out of her sails much more effectively than anything we could have done or said.
Roger is wise. Sometimes nothing is the best response. I hear it works on trolls too.
]Apparently this tester was the only one running into it. It's a real issue, but not enough to hold up a release thousands are waiting for. Since she did a good job stumbling on it and defining it we are going to address it; it will just be in our next release.
In the meantime Roger, our main programmer, showed her a little workaround that will keep her functioning until we program a fix.
Everything is good, right?
Wrong!
She comes back with, "But you need to WARN people about this!"
Roger replied that we would. We planned to put a note in the help files.
Not good enough. What about people who don't know to look in the help files?
We speculated what kind of warning she felt would be sufficient. Yelling from the rooftop? Taking out an ad during the Superbowl? Perhaps a big yellow notice in the package which beats the customer about the head until he reads it?
All kidding aside, Roger got back to her and kindly explained that the notice in help would be fine. We can't put a prominent warning for every possible problem in a prominent place in the package because all the user would see or hear would be warnings. And they'd kind of lose their effectiveness.
She wasn't convinced. This issue was URGENT (to only her) and people have to be WARNED!
So she took it upon herself to post a message on every AT message board warning people about the "problem" with our software.
At first we were kind of upset and wanted to respond, but Roger told us not to. After a bit we realized that half the people-who-had-to-be-warned didn't know what she was talking about and the other half didn't care.
It kind of took the wind out of her sails much more effectively than anything we could have done or said.
Roger is wise. Sometimes nothing is the best response. I hear it works on trolls too.
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