QA Hates You

An employer putting the real job duties in the title:

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I assume that an analsyt is supposed to just sit on his or her butt all day and let dev and project management have their ways with the project.  I’ve known a number of QA professionals who’ve thought that their jobs were, essentially, to call meetings and discuss/prioritize issues found by the customers instead of, I don’t know, understanding the software and technology and enforcing quality or testing.

Sadly, also in my experience, that unbelievable lightness of being tends to rise to management quickly.

Well, all right, it wouldn’t have been perfect even if it hadn’t had this mistake, but here’s a Disney e-mail with a subtle flaw in its alt text for the text images:

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Look closely at any e-mail, and you’ll find at least one typo most of the time.  If you’re in QA, you should look more closely than that.

It’s every thing, every time. As this high school principal and his minions discovered:

Westlake High School officials misspelled “education” on the diplomas distributed last weekend. It’s been the subject of mockery on local radio.

Principal Timothy Freeman says he sent back the diplomas once to correct another error. When the diplomas came back, no one bothered to check things they thought were right the first time.

In information technology, that happens most frequently with version control problems (in design) or new code that doesn’t play well with the other code. You need to test it (or proofread) it all from scratch every iteration; if you only check resolved issues, you’re going to be embarrassed.

(Link seen on Electric Venom.)

Philosophical musings present in alt text in the Ballard 25th Anniversary Sweepstakes.

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Am I an istant winner? If so, what does it mean to my existence and consciousness that I crave istant things? Are istant things the opposite of extant things?

Of course, it could be a typo, but why remove the mysteries from the everyday world?

If your standards are not that high, here’s a job for you:

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Senioer, indeed.

How many grammar and spelling errors can you pack into one field label? Well, if you’re Nicole Fields Photography, you can work in at least one of each:

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The label Who can I thank for the refferal? misspells referral, of course, but also uses who as the direct object, and we all know that should be whom.

There’s a reason for the difference, boys and girls: because the proper use makes the meaning clear.

A typo in Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword:

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Trust Dictionary.com, but verify.

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There’s no i in ornithologst. Well, there’s one, but there should be two.

The title bar of thissss sweepsstakess ssssurvey page indicates either a typo or something more unholy and eldritch:

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Eh, who reads the titles anyway, right?

A common typo on sweepstakes promotion pages, courtesy of Maxim:

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I don’t know why, but misspelling official as offical in the official rules link happens an awful lot.

I know why it’s not often caught, though: because quality hurts.

Cut and paste makes everything better, right? Well, no, it gives you a chance to replicate your mistakes multiple times. For example, Frontgate.com shows us exactly where the designer/developer used cut and paste on the Web site.

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An insert in a package of Belkin cables:

Because periods and Ls would have broken the printing budget.

Fox News’s Suzanne Sena has an all-Flash Web site complete with the Click to Activate Control box. But it’s not the interface that’s sinister; it’s the text within her bio.
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If I were an e-mail marketer, I would almost be insulted:

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I realize I single out BizJournals.com a lot, but geez, the quality of its e-mails and its Web site are atrocious and worthy of scorn.

If it hurts to sign in, only people who have to sign in will sign in:

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I, like many, have tried the Personal DNA test, and it revealed something about me that I had never known:

Software Test & Performance magazine calls for nominations for its 2007 TESTERS CHOICE AWARDS.

[sic]

Disapppointing quality results can spur real change: