[slim]

IMHO there is no "it's kinda part of the game". there is good design and there is better design. no opt-in for search should be a no-brainer. remember that this is where you deliver value to the user.

your slogan should be "got error? paste it here."

[kingnothing]

If they went that route, they would probably lose out on a bunch of answers that people figured out on their own, which is kind of the whole point of the site. Otherwise you have a ton of error messages and problems, and no way to fix them.

[slim]

hey, what do you think about this story :

1 - the user pastes his error message 2 - he gets a list of possible answers 3 - if he finds a suitable answer, he clicks on it 4 - if he does not find an answer, you ask him to give his email adress so that you notify him when an answer is found 5 - if an answer is found you notify him 6 - after 48hours you send him a message with the subject line "nobody found and answer to your question. did you find one?"