Thoughts on Disclaimers

Jens Meiert, October 28, 2008.

This entry is filed under Uncategorized.

How awesome that this seems to be most popular in Germany: Disclaimers on both websites and emails. Quite recently I came across the German Wikipedia article on disclaimers which talks about the topic in some detail, and I could not but go for yet another “thoughts” post, focusing on the worst pieces.

In a nutshell: There are some misconceptions of the Web as well as disclaimers, disclaimers tend to do stupid things, but there are some laws in some countries that require you to use them, and disclaimers should be used accordingly.

Website Disclaimers

The most interesting part when it comes to avoiding to get connected to contents of other websites, including changes of their contents due to whatever reasons, are the “technical approaches” recommended by Wikipedia that should come with site disclaimers:

Clearly identify external links: Kind of silly but still a very popular concept which is probably due to not so few people thinking of “websites,” not the “Web,” and meaning some territorial thinking that changes once they’re using and not just “enlarging” the Web. For a user it does usually only matter under certain circumstances whether or not he’s on your or another person’s site. Thus having site owners use external link flags to complement a disclaimer looks like a proper misconception of what the Web actually is, and how it’s generally perceived.
Open external links in new browser windows: It’s getting worse, though German Wikipedia’s careful adding that this method might not be appreciated by site visitors. There are some exceptions to the rule, however links shouldn’t open new windows or tabs at all, and that’s basically due to the very same “Web” metaphor again.
Don’t ‘deep link’ but only link to the other sites’ homepages: It’s getting even worse, though Wikipedia stresses that this is not quite usable (actually I wonder if techniques that aren’t usable should be talked about yet be recommended at all anyway?). And right, that sounds like a pretty stupid idea, considering that links are useful, and that they build some kind of expectation that will certainly not be met when being very specific about a target, then linking to some homepage. Considering that this homepage might probably change, too, following up on the original “linking to evil sites or to sites that might theoretically turn apocalyptic” problem.
Highlight the dates when external links have been added. Not using any judging adjectives here but raising the question how helpful that really is, not just referring to that there might be other ways to determine and prove these dates (cached versions of respective pages, versioning system repositories, and the like), but also how something like that is supposed to look like? Will dates being added to all “external” links be of any interest to users, too?

The article seems to reflect a discussion that shouldn’t really exist this way, including the common phenomenon that there seem to have been few thoughts about usability and additional ramifications. The only good and remarkable thing is that German courts don’t condemn external links to need disclaimers and the like (which many people seem to think taking into account more than 150,000 disclaimers based on a 1998 court order), but that fortunately, it appears to be the context that is important.

Email Disclaimers

There are a lot of questionable signatures out there already – something I forgot to mention, huh –, however Germany introduced new requirements for corporate mail I guess two years ago targeting companies listed in commercial registers. Among the mandatory things (otherwise there are penalty payments) signatures of company representatives need to include are the name of the company owner or executive, company name, legal form, full address of office location, register entry and number; on top of that there is maybe the name of the sender and his or her position, etc., in fact resulting in signatures that are longer than 20 lines.

I claim that this requirement makes email even less user-friendly, and it contributes to even more cluttering, and that’s not even considering the all-popular top-posting habits. A simple solution like having a link to the companies’ website that contains required information added to signatures might meet legal requirements already, but apparently, that would mean that you have to designate that link as external, including the date when you created or updated the signature …

Enjoy the most popular posts, probably including:

Comments

On October 28, 2008, 21:09 CET, Dave said:

As usual, you’re spot on. It’s of course important to accommodate users, but I’ve received a growing number of requests and questions along the lines of “what if our users don’t know that the blue underlined words are a link?”

As web developers, I think it’s important that we refuse many of these silly changes rather than assume the role of kindergarten teacher for each visitor to our site.
On October 29, 2008, 10:52 CET, Michael Schmidt said:

Still, Wikipedia has nice little icons for external links as well.
On October 30, 2008, 10:53 CET, Jens Meiert said:

Dave, indeed, silly things shouldn’t be addressed; that some of them get addressed seems to depend on some inexperience and incompetence on one side, and failure to argue on the other side. It’s interesting stuff – above all, people usually don’t want to do stupid things – that seems to be kind of omnipresent.

Michael, wow. Which changes everything!

Jens Meiert