Thinking a bit more about error messages: I recently found the most irritating ever 404 (the message you see on a website when the page you’re looking for can’t be found).
Defra’s 404 starts by apologising that it can’t find the page you’re looking for, then proceeds to tell you that this is because the website has recently been “improved”:
Our website has changed – pages/documents have moved
In response to your feedback, we’ve redesigned and restructured the site to make it more user-friendly. The key navigation at the top of the page has been improved, making it easier for you to find what you are looking for.
That’s right: the reason you can’t find what you’re looking for is because the website is now “more user-friendly”. This error message even has the audacity to claim that it is now “easier for you to find what you are looking for”. Does anyone else see the irony here?
To be fair to Defra, the 404 page does explain that it wasn’t possible to redirect every page to a new location – and some broken links are perhaps inevitable during a site overhaul of this scale.
Nevertheless, whoever wrote this 404 message needs to realise that error messages are the point at which a website’s relationship with its visitor is most vulnerable. Now might not be a good time to be blowing your own trumpet.