IMHO no.

In the first place I don't like excessive formatting. And indeed it seems to me that only a restricted subset of tags is really needed. For example <code> tags for... ehm... code, and then if you don't know that <em> is for emphasizing, who cares? You can still use ASCII-like emphasizing, a' la "_emphasizing_". You may learn gradually how to improve the visual appearance of your posts. Chances are that other monks will help you doing so.

For example often newbies want to stress that, say, if or for are keywords and do so by writing "IF" and "FOR" respectively. When I saw someone doing so I either /msg'ed them or included in my reply (if any) the recommendation to use inline <code> or <c> tags.

Then there are the linking shortcuts. I didn't know any in the beginning. I may have read the docs in the first place, but they seemed to me overly complex at first. I discovered them when indavertently writing [snip] in a quotation. Then I checked PerlMonks FAQ and I learned how to use them.

In short: KISS. And learn gradually!

In reply to Re: Improving the input forms by blazar
in thread Improving the input forms by s_m_b

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.