Strange message in chatterbox

[McA]

Hi all,

Currently I have the following message in my chatterbox:

root says root just sends automated notices, but you tried to reply "" to it.

Please, what does this mean?

McA

[ww]

Simple version: don't try to answer messages from root.

slightly more precise: the Monastery's gears, treadmills, belts and other clockworks don't include any mechanism for root to actually process any message you might send to it. So don't.

[McA]

Thank you. I was not aware that I tried to respond to such a message. But you know: The older the shaky I am. So what do I know where I klicked on... ;-)

McA

[kcott]

G'day McA,

A bit of a blast from the past, but I just had exactly the same problem and discussed possible causes with Corion on the CB:

[kcott]    I got this message in CB: "root says root just sends automa
+ted notices, but you tried to reply "" to it." ...
[kcott]    It's been noted before: Strange message in chatterbox ...
[kcott]    I was working in Nodes to consider at the time (if that mat
+ters). ....
[kcott]    I assume I've just clicked the wrong button or link. Does a
+nyone have any ideas what might have caused this? I'd like to avoid a
+ repetition.
[Corion]    Maybe you tried to /msg root  with one or more spaces afte
+r root, or something like that?
[Corion]    Yep. Whenever you /msg root the check doesn't even look at
+ whether you're actually trying to say something :)
[Corion]    /msg root
[Corion]    Hmmm. I must be misreading the code in message because my 
+attempts at saying nothing elicit no reply...
[Corion]    Ah - code comprehension error. You need to have a message 
+from root, and you need to reply to it. Then, even if you say nothing
+, you'll get that message.
[Corion]    At least that's my current reading of message. Later I mig
+ht get a different reading, in a more sonore voice.
[kcott]    Thanks for the follow-up Corion. I just tried to look at my
+ nodes Nodes You Wrote and got: "kcott has no writeups, it seems.Serv
+er Error (Error ID 8658203b6489)". Possibly not something I did?
[kcott]: We got a little out-of-sync there (my last response followed 
+your "Hmmm... " line. I did have a message from 'root' (about a reply
+ to a node) which I deleted - probably just miskeyed/clicked somethin
+g ... phone call ...

Anyway, I obviously got interrupted there; however, it seems to me that this raises a few questions:

• Is the [Move] button also actioning the [Send] button?
• If so, should it be?
• Are there other (mis)associations between the [Move], [Send] and, possibly, [constrain] buttons?

If this is the normal and expected behaviour, then maybe a doco "gotcha" additon — I'm thinking along similar lines to this in Chatterbox FAQ:

• /msg username text

  ... At some point in your travels here, you will probably type "/msh" or forget the "/msg" altogether and the whole world will see your message. ...