Logged In: YES 
user_id=6656

I'd say "idea 2".  the issues too complicated to have a hope
of explaining in the error message, so the only hope is to
hand out enough key words to make finding the relavent
section of the docs easy.

I'd also like to say:

The "of course, while I have no problem with this at all,
it's surely too much for a lesser being" flavor of argument
always rings hollow to me. -- Tim Peters, 29 Apr 1998