May be just a matter of preference but for me "our site is experiencing server errors" is much clearer communication than "seeing unicorns." The latter requires me to learn a new terminology in a high pressure environment for no good reason.
And if "seeing unicorns" was a code word for a specific kind of errors, then again I would rather have a more descriptive terminology and not one that I may confuse for an inside joke.
You are right. Some users are happy to see quirky behavior that serves as an "in joke" for them, but any who failed to understand will not find any comfort during a site emergency.
Status messages should be communicated with no unnecessary ambiguity both internally (where unicorns may be the clearest term) and externally (where it is not).
Lack of clarity during periods of heavy human workload is a common cause of e.g. plane crashes. Operations people of the internet would do well to learn from mistakes made before the cloud was a thing.
I'm not a Ruby programmer. I've never used Unicorn. I had only vaguely heard of it. I found it completely obvious in context.
If you get bent out of shape over some pretty mild slang, there are loads of companies out there who'll take your money for as staid a response as you'd like.
>May be just a matter of preference but for me "our site is experiencing server errors" is much clearer communication than "seeing unicorns." The latter requires me to learn a new terminology in a high pressure environment for no good reason.
If you don't already know that "unicorns" means in this context, then you are not a GitHub user, and thus it being down is not a "high pressure environment".
And if "seeing unicorns" was a code word for a specific kind of errors, then again I would rather have a more descriptive terminology and not one that I may confuse for an inside joke.