Els Aerts on the Web Usability Blog hits the nail with her blogpost about Error messages.
Not only true for all kinds of websites and client apps, but just the same in SharePoint..My customer doesn’t want a fat-ass code page telling him in a bizarre language that something is wrong..some SharePoint errors are just downright scary!!
So please, do your user a favor and do something about your error pages!!!
Some suggestions Els gives:
– use the language of the form
– be specific
– dont blame the user
– avoid spelling errors