Satya's blog - Negative and positive information

Sometimes I get reports from people about a problem with one of my programs or scripts. When reporting problems, there are two types of information:

Negative information: what didn't happen
Positive information: what you did, what you expected, what happened

We prefer to get positive information. It's like saying "My car won't go" versus "I got in, turned the key, and it made some noise like [noise] and then nothing happened." or "The engine started, I moved into first, bumped into a wall, and it won't go any further."