Wikidot offers an amazing user experience. Its product is excellent, and its process of listening, experimenting, and collaborating on improvements is inspiring. And honestly, its homegrown qualities are what drew me to the service in the first place. So I love it, spelling mistakes and all.
Funny thing is, for a service that thrives on inclusion, our user interface is often less than friendly. Error messages seem especially grumpy. Here are two examples (thanks, vaguito):
Oooops!
Sorry, you can not edit this page. Only site administrators and perhaps selected moderators are allowed to.
Oooops!
Sorry, you can not add new post in this thread. Only Wikidot.com registered users, members of this site, site administrators and perhaps selected moderators are allowed to.
OK, at this point it's clear the user has met a roadblock. So where's the solution? Apart from a cursory "sorry", this message doesn't offer much help or communicate much empathy. Remember, it's newbies who will most likely get this stuff, and we want them to feel welcome.
So let's turn this message around. How about this?
This is a protected page.
If you'd like to edit it, you'll need special permissions. Try signing on, or you may contact the site administrator to discuss that access.
This thread is protected.
This discussion is limited to certain users. Depending on the permissions setting, it's available to site administrators, moderators, site members, or Wikidot registered users. If you'd like to take part, try signing on or joining the site.
These messages are another visible opportunity for one-step site membership.
Ideally, these messages should relate to their context. They should reflect the page's (thread's) level of protection (site members only, admin/moderators, etc). They should detect whether the user is already logged on and whether they're already a member of the site. They should offer a direct link to PM the site admin. They should give the user relevant guidance about what to do next. It's not enough just to identify the problem. Here's a great chance to offer new users a positive step up and an invitation to participate further.