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BladeRunner: I suppose it depends on how you view it, but to me the majority of the above descriptions indicate user error of some type or form.
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I agree, in the same sense that driver error is the cause of nearly all car accidents. But note that the person experiencing the disaster might not be the person making a design or assembly error that caused a later problem (IE the person who had multiple problems with a Koolance case) However it is more likely that the person who forgot to turn a pump on is also the user experiencing the result.
So there are multiple sorts of 'user errrors' ranging from the direct action that caused a near immediate failure (forgot to turn the pump on) to the somewhat indirect effect of poor workmanship leading to a delayed problem, to the very indirect effect of making poor design choices (possibly because of lack of knowledge) that cause later problems by component failure.
While all can quite accurately be described as 'User Error', just lumping them all together doesn't really seem to be useful as an educational tactic.
I feel it is better to find out what kind of problems people had, what the causes were in as many cases as people are willing to admit to having a problem at, and find out what specific failures are occurring. This tells you what kind of user errors are being experienced, and points to the defensive strategies giving the most effectiveness for the effort. (or showing which ones aren't worth the trouble...)
For instance, CPU / Block separations are seemingly rare, which means there isn't much payback in trying to do extreme measures to prevent it, or do detection and handling when it does. Drippy leaks are much more common, which says that putting more efforts into assembly quality, sealant application, clamp useage, etc. will have a payback that makes the added effort worth while.
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Its hard to categorise every happing, but maybe to be of real world use your poll should distinguish between real pump failure and the usual user error induced "not turning it on". My guess is the majority of that vote % on pump failure is actually user error, but that wouldn't be obvious to someone just looking at the poll.
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Again, I sort of agree, but bear in mind that I am limited by the board to 10 responses. I made a list of every failure type I could think of, or recollect someone complaining about having had on the board, and got about 15 possible items. I had to whittle things down, so I took those items that I
thought were less likely and combined them, hoping that the stories people posted would tell enough detail to figure out how to break down the combined responses. In the case of the pump failure, you might just be wrong! I just did a search on 'pump' and found 11 described failures out of 16 reported for that response.
2 drippy leaks
3 'induced' failures where something else caused the pump to die
2 failures of a connection to the pump
2 total failures (both in the same case)
and just TWO 'Forgot to plug it in' UE failures.
(Some of the classifications might be subject to interpretation, but that's what I would call them)
The problems with the poll as I see it,
1. Not enough granularity in the responses (not enough choices).
2. Not all responders told their tale of woe.
3. Some responders may have checked multiple boxes for the same failure (i.e. forgot to plug in pump, so the block melted, so it leaked water all over the place, so it electrocuted the cat
should have gotten one response, but might have gotten four)
4. While I tried to be specific in my questions, people may have interpreted them differently.
5. Nothing prevented votes being cast for 'extreme cooling' failures which, while interesting, were NOT the subject of the poll and could skew the results. (IE plumbing freeze-ups, or condensation drips are not problems that a non-extreme cooler would ever have to worry about)
The only way I see that could realy get around some of the problems is if people just told their failure stories, and ONE person analyzed them and put them into a chart so that the classifications were as consistent as possible, but that would be harder to manage.
Gooserider