Hub van de Laar said:
The message "Your post should appear in a few minutes",
sounded to me as an error-message, telling I should enter
my message more quickly and so I tried a few times.
Perhaps someone can change the "should" into "will" ?
Unless you see the word 'Error' in a message, it's very unwise to assume an
error has occurred.
The message shouldn't be changed. 'Should' is the most correct term. There's
an implicit 'barring unusual circumstances such as the NNTP servers being
destroyed by a falling meteor or other natural calamity'. Most people don't
need all the unlikely but possible contingencies of life spelled out for
them in all contexts.
Then again, the 'should' may be qualifying the time estimate. If Microsoft
were experiencing a concerted DoS attack, it could take several hours for
your post to appear. If their NNTP servers crashed (something that HAS
occurred in the past), your post may never appear even if you send it a few
hundred times in rapid succession. Then again, it may appear in a matter of
seconds. The variability of the time it actually takes compared to the
imprece time estimate of 'a few minutes' justifies the use of 'should'
rather than 'will' in the English language.
