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Happened to me a few times this week: I try to run an SEDE query, get this error

Something unexpected went wrong while running your query. Don't worry, blame is already being assigned.

while in fact it just needs a Cloudflare verification. It would be be much clearer to state so instead of a vague "blame is already being assigned" (What blame? To whom? How long should I wait? What do I do in the meantime? etc.).

Feature request: make that message clearer in such cases, or even better, show the Cloudflare verification.

Screenshot of the error message:

enter image description here

Screenshot of a subsequent Cloudflare verification I had to do to fix the error:

enter image description here

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    Happens to me too. Commented Jun 22 at 19:02
  • related: Has anything changed about how SEDE counts request rate? I've started getting HTTP 429 recently Commented Jun 23 at 5:24
  • 1
    It needs to say "Don't worry, blame Cloudflare". Commented Jun 23 at 12:55
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    Just to spell it out, the second half of that error message is most definitely supposed to be humorous/ sarcastic, though I understand how it might just come across as confusing. I'm always in favor of more specific errors though, especially for this specific Cloudflare case. Commented Jun 23 at 19:26
  • even after doing the human verification, the issue remained Commented Oct 14 at 18:04
  • @khairulalam Thanks, yes I know, I reported the issue: meta.stackexchange.com/q/412961/178179 (mirror) Commented Oct 14 at 18:22
  • @FranckDernoncourt: Your question was removed?! Commented Nov 19 at 6:46
  • Well, they've removed the "blame" part, but the problem persists. Thank you very much Franck, I could never have guessed. Commented Nov 19 at 6:47
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    @PhilippeCloutier Yes, removed, someone posted a duplicate after I posted my question, and my question got removed for being a duplicate. Welcome to Stack Exchange... (the author of the duplicate even voted to delete my question!) Commented Nov 19 at 7:05

1 Answer 1

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The sentence “Don't worry, blame is already being assigned” was removed, so it is considerably less misleading now, but “while running your query” still implies that the query was run, which is misleading. I am new to SEDE, and assumed that meant there was an error in my syntax, and was in disbelief about how unhelpful the errors were.

I am sure many would already argue that subjecting registered users―including "trusted" users―to CAPTCHAs, just to run a DQL query, is a bug. But in my opinion, not:

  1. Subjecting trusted users to highly superfluous CAPTCHA
  2. which is broken
  3. and displaying a ultravague and misleading message

... is not a “feature request”, but a fix request.

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