Re^2: Code tags warning

[Roy Johnson]

Frankly, yes. People quickly learn to ignore things that are always there. But when something different pops up, they tend to take notice. It's a little like the difference between what perl does under use warnings, versus how helpful it would be if perl simply told you not to use uninitialized variables every time it ran.

[Whitehawke]

People quickly learn to ignore things that are always there.

One way to deal with this would be to select the wording of the message at random (a la 'fortune'). So, you might forget the code tags on four separate occasions and get a different one of the following each time:

    Code tags in your posts, 
    These are a great goodness, true
    Alas, all unfound

        (or the alternate version of the above:)
  
        Code tags in your posts, 
        These are a great goodness, true
        Unlike this haiku


    Code tags, code tags, wherefore art thou code tags?


    You know...that looks a lot like a code snippet, 
    but nary a code tag in sight.  You sure you want 
    to post?


    I'm sorry <username>, I'm afraid I can't do that.
    At least, not until you add some code tags.

[Roy Johnson]

I like it just for the amusement factor. But I think the fact that no message appears except when the system determines they've got untagged code, the warnings won't suffer from "always there" syndrome.

Sadly, even if we were to randomize the hint text, it would quickly take on a background noise quality. Because it's still always there in some form, whereas the warnings would only come up when there's a reason to grab the user's attention.

[NateTut]

I'm all for encouraging proper posting, but let's remember that newbies are the most likely to commit a posting faux pas are exactly the ones who need help the most.