slightly OT: preventing user stupidity

[GCC Consulting]

> > 
> > How about a client who decides to do a year end roll over 
> procedure mid year?
> > 
> > Had this years ago.  Loads of fun undoing the mess but profitable.
> > 
> > To keep them from doing this by accident again, I pass worded the 
> > menu, the output also.
> > 
> > So, they had to enter 2 passwords and the confirm twice that they 
> > wanted to do this, after reading what was about happen.
> > 
> > So, at the end of the year, they called me.  THEY FORGOT THE 
> > PASSWORDS.  That was easy, it was one of the partners child's name.
> > 
> 
> You can not protect the user from all the stupidity.  But my 
> solution to yearend or monthend stuff is to check the date 
> and require the date to be near the correct point in time.  
> After Jan 1, a message pops up to remind them the yearend 
> process must be done.  When they run the year end, it checks 
> the date and it must be in the year following the last time 
> it was run.  All safety checks.
> 
> I used to have an idiot that would print checks for payables 
> and select the wrong dates, he would pay too much stuff, so I 
> added date checks to make sure everything was so many days 
> old, and that the date he typed to be the check date was 
> within 7 days of the computer date.
> 
> And on those questions where they just fly by and don't pay 
> attention, I make the answer an unusual keyboard key, instead 
> of Y/N.  On deletes or dangerous stuff, I make they answer 
> with a ! so they have to think about it.
> 
> I will normally word a question so that N or ENTER will mean 
> OK continue, but I always word purge or delete questions the 
> other way around, where they must type a Y to make the 
> function continue, and ENTER will cancel.
> 
> Also a good point would be to make the answer a YES NO edit 
> or at least limited to a few characters.  Especially if the 
> data entry is usually numeric.  Had a customer lean on the 
> keyboard key 9 and posted so many payments, it overflowed the 
> fields.  By adding a yes/no question after each posting, with 
> a test for is $999,999.99 really an acceptable payment? it 
> never happened again.
> 
> Just my own two cents of suggestions.
> 
> Nancy
Nancy,

Points well taken.  This happened over 20 years ago while I fairly new to
programming and peoples possible stupidly.

I have implemented many of the date checks as you outlined.

One date check I had to place in my Textile Brokerage System was to insure that
the proper year, both back and forward was used.  In fact, I had to check that
the start ship date was no larger then 2 months out. If it was, the clerk was
prompted to check the date.  If it was a year or more out, they could not
continue.  Contracts may run for a year but were NEVER placed a year in advance.


All we can do is minimize possible user error.

Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting