Ask HN: Honesty vs simplicity: how honest should you be to your users?
There is often a tradeoff between honesty and simplicity.
For example, in an iPhone puzzle app, you might tell the user that you are sending their score to the server.
But maybe you are doing more: the server may not trust the app and require a solution -- not just the score.
Telling the user that you are sending the solution to the server is also misleading, as the server may not store the solution (other than temporarily in a log perhaps) -- but use it only to check the score.
Explaining all this to the user is probably too much.
So what would you do in a situation like this?
Just say something that is close to the truth that is easy to understand?
For example, in an iPhone puzzle app, you might tell the user that you are sending their score to the server.
But maybe you are doing more: the server may not trust the app and require a solution -- not just the score.
Telling the user that you are sending the solution to the server is also misleading, as the server may not store the solution (other than temporarily in a log perhaps) -- but use it only to check the score.
Explaining all this to the user is probably too much.
So what would you do in a situation like this?
Just say something that is close to the truth that is easy to understand?