[elliekelly]

I recently sat through an hour-long "Continuing Legal Education" webinar and, in order to get CLE credit, they need to confirm you're paying attention. About 40 minutes in I got a pop-up with a 30 second timer: "Please confirm your attendance" with two buttons "yes" and "no".

Well I actually was paying attention to the presentation and I instinctively hit "no" so that I could see the content again.

Guess who didn't get credit for attending?

[pfraze]

Why.... why would there be a no button

[knodi123]

It's like the old joke about the rookie cop who's too nervous to investigate a big spooky warehouse at night. He shouts into the darkness "is anybody here?"

A few seconds later, he hears a voice say "......no". So he relaxes with a sigh, and goes to report the all clear to his superior.

[reading-at-work]

That's pretty funny, and would be better without the old "blonde" trope. I forgot that was ever a thing.

[knodi123]

You think so? I thought joke culture says you need to pick a pre-approved reason to explain dumbness. I changed it to "rookie".

[_zhqs]

Off the cuff, a better user experience altogether might be to prompt attendees afterwards to submit their biggest take-away, instead of a patronizing poke.

That way, not only does it confirm paying attention, but you can also get a signal of course effectiveness.

[Allezxandre]

Proof-of-work really is a nice system

[SilasX]

If I had to guess, it's because the programmer couldn't find out (soon enough) how to do another kind of dialogue box and then went with the standard yes/no but then didn't look up how to handle "no" and assumed everyone would do "yes".

[elliekelly]

If I had to guess it's probably because not everyone attending the webinar needs CLE credits reported. I can imagine people intentionally selecting no if they're not an attorney or if they're licensed in a jurisdiction that doesn't require it.

Or perhaps it's to teach the most valuable CLE of all - too hasty a response risks a critical mistake. I can't even recall the specific topic of the webinar but I definitely learned a lesson!

[alxlaz]

To make sure you're paying attention and not just clicking buttons at random on the screen, of course!