We see malformed posts here on a daily basis, very often from newcomers who haven't yet learned about <code> tags. The editors spend a fair amount of time cleaning up malformed posts, but still the posts come.

I wonder if there isn't a simple way to avoid many malformed posts. All we would need to do would be to apply some proactive education in the right place.

What if, below each <TEXTAREA> for entering and updating nodes, there appeared a brief summary of tag and entity conventions. It could appear based on a user setting that could be turned off once someone knew there way around (and was past the point of not knowing about posting conventions).

The summary might read:

Please read _______ before making your first post.

Use <p> to separate paragraphs, or <br> to force a line break.
Use <code> .. </code> tags around code fragments. These work like <pre> tags, which you should not use.

Use <b>bold</b> for bold text, and <i>italic</i> for italic.

To link to a node, use [id://node_id] or [id://node_id|optional words]
To link externally, use [http://www.example.com/|optional words]
Links are disabled within <code> tags.

Outside of <code> tags, use &#091; and &#093; for [ and ].

See _________ for additonal details. To disable this summary, uncheck _____ in your user settings.

Does this seem reasonable? If so, what kinds of things would you like to see in a such a summary?

In reply to Markup summary when posting/replying? by dws

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.