I bookmarked this while I was on Vay-Cay:
John H "Buffistas Building a Better Board" Nov 28, 2002 4:54:44 pm EST
One thing we haven't done is change this:
You may use HTML or quick-edit formatting.
to, say:
You may use HTML or quick-edit formatting. But be careful! Bad code -- links and tables particularly -- can cause big problems.
Do others think this is necessary? It would appear above every posting box. It seems cluttery to me - I'd rather wait for the Stompomatic to be installed - but I'll defer to popular opinion.
That's not even real code!!!
Works just fine in HyperTalk, except for the quote:
on mouseUp
put "jesse" into user
IF (user="Jesse") THEN
dont_show_any_emails_because_shes_weird
end if
end mouseUp
on dont_show_any_emails_because_shes_weird
answer "I know, I know"
end dont_show_any_emails_because_shes_weird
Do others think this is necessary?
I don't think so. It's like "Drive carefully!" I was kinda gonna -- that's why they're called traffic accidents and not traffic plans.
I'm not going to disagree. I do see the "'baby on board?' why then I
won't
kill you!" aspect of it.
I think people know to be careful, especially if they've made a mistake once already.
How about a mention in the HTML page though?
[format edit]
Yeah -- that's probably better.
So when a bad coder codes badly, their (corrected and harmless but ugly) message will not show up in the thread, but instead they will be headed off into another page to edit? So, no public humiliation, but the potential for user frustration if they a) can't figure out what they did and b) needed a timely post? Is this okay?
If the post is harmlessified, then do we need to cause a forced edit?
Hrmm...
I believe the theory at the moment is that formatting errors, like unclosed bold tags that make the whole of the rest of the page bold, would be fixed.
Whether to say "Hey! I had to fix that post!" is still in debate?
The other kind of error with the unclosed quotes would result in a "I'm not going ahead with this post" kind of error, for the reason that finding it is a lot easier than fixing it, and that it means huge chunks of the page go missing.
If the post is harmlessified, then do we need to cause a forced edit?
To prevent embarrassment?
It would be made harmless, but it will probably still look ugly. If the poster can't figure out what he did (or doesn't care), he can still click post and accept the Stompomatic's changes as is. One extra click won't make the post less timely.
Incidentally, I actually made a drop-the-quotation-mark error the other day and it showed up asterisked out. I assume y'all know that, but I was briefly startled. (It was whitefont - I briefly thought "oh my God, the board doesn't like spoilers anymore!" before coming to my senses.)
