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in reply to Wiki-Style syntax for posting

Actually, although I am not endorcing BBcode, most forums have some simple buttons over their textarea that allows easy access to bold, italics, url, code, etc. Updating the input interface to support such buttons might allow users less familiar with html to make nicely formatted posts.

On the other hand, if you cannot pick up some small bits of syntax as a programmer....

Confucius says kill mosquito unless cannon

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Re^2: Wiki-Style syntax for posting
by ambrus (Abbot) on Oct 25, 2008 at 21:06 UTC

    Easy access to fancy formatting would make posts worse, not better. Just look at any of those forums with buttons and see what bloating forum signatures people add to their posts.

    Mosts posts don't need need more formatting than paragraphs and code tags. Italics can sometimes help if used very rarely and as skillfully as Arany János did in his poems. You do sometimes need other formatting, and some ideas are even best to be shown by a table or drawing, but it would be foolish to advertise such features or they'll be abused.

      I too have phat bloated sig pictures on the game forums I frequent, no matter what codebase the forums use or what features they offer. Compare this to the ascii sigs on newsgroups or perlish signatures here. Signatures seem to be more influenced by what the community as a whole adheres to rather than the ease of access to an IMG tag. Sure it might make perlmonks easier to troll, but most trolls would take the time to learn your forum software anyway, so I think that point is moot.

      I think you under estimate the usefulness of other tags such as strike through when editing ones own post, so although I agree with a minimalist approach I might like more formatting options than you. All in all the powers to be could choose which formatting options to make available as buttons (such as only having bold, italics, paragraph and code tag buttons).

      I also think you misread my desire for said buttons, I don't care for them or need them, but others might prefer them

      Confucius says kill mosquito unless cannon