The two options, assuming the resources are okay, are:

1. To check for errors, patch the post, post it, and advise the user. The user still must fix it, or live with the (self-contained) ugliness and the potential embarassment.

2. To check for errors, refuse to post it, and advise the user. The user must fix it, and may become frustrated if they can't figure out the problem, but only has small personal shame and not vast globe-spanning shame.

Either way, the user still has to go back and edit if s/he wants her/his original intent to come through. Both ways, the board is protected.

I really like option 2 better. Not being able to post feels like it'd be bewildering and inarticulate-making to people who, say, don't completely understand everything that's going on with HTML; and plus it's a lot easier to say "I wrote this post, and now the letters are all huge, and I don't know how to fix it! It's here, can you tell me what to do to make it better?" than to say "I wrote this post and it won't let me post it and I'm not sure how to fix it and I'm not sure how to describe what's going wrong."

Either way, the user still has to go back and edit if s/he wants his original intent to come through. Both ways, the board is protected.

...and either way, we don't have to figure out what they intended, or the correct place to insert the required tag.

There's an issue there which I didn't make clear before, which is that the quick-and-dirty way to do the tag count is something like this (in Perl):

@tags =~ /<*>/g

(simplified), but what that means is we grab all the tags and put them in an array. Figuring out not only how many there are, but also exactly where they are, would be much more of a pain.

I really like option 2 better.

Er, do you? The rest of your post seems to favour option 1...

In the meantime, it might be wise to add a line to the HTML/Quick-Edit help page that says "Please be advised that misplaced t a href or t table tags can break the board, so double check your code if you use them!"

I'd think that most people who know enough HTML to be using it would know enough to be able to spot their own errors, especially since the average post would only have a few tags in it.

t edit: x-post w/John

t edit2: the x-post was with Jess, not John. I know how to read. Really, I do.

it might be wise to add a line to the HTML/Quick-Edit help page

What she said, only, also put it right above the posting box where we shamelessly encourage people to use HTML...

I really like option 2 better

You're right, that's not true. What's true is I like option 1 and I'm a big spaz.

I think the relevant question is which is easier to code.

This may not be at all relevant, but I'm curious: how come, when you forget the last " in an a href thingie (which I just did), it messes up the way the page displays, but if you use a ' instead, it breaks everything?