Sorry, I forgot <facetious></facetious> and <sarcasm></sarcasm> don't always work here. ;-)

Seriously, though, is there some concern that an entire page of "Where should I post X?". "How do I compose an effective node title?", "How do I post a question effectively?", "Markup in the Monatstery", "Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags: (followed by a paragraph of tags)", "If you think you're going to use <pre> tags — don't! Use <code> tags instead! This applies to data as well as code.", "Outside of code tags, you may need to use entities for some characters: (followed by the 5 most-used characters that need to be entities)" and " See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info." in addition to the blurb above the text entry box just makes it all blend together?

One or two very simple and clear directives would be less likely to get lost in the clutter. Pointing people to read an "etiquette of posting" and giving the absolute most basic information, such as the "Your (PerlMonks-approved) HTML-formatted text:" I personally believe would make it more likely people would follow that etiquette. Trying to teach it all at every node posting does make it available to people more directly, but I think it both diminishes the impact visually and dilutes the psychological impact of the individual points.

In reply to Re^5: Monastery Gates Suggestion for Improvement (patients) by mr_mischief
in thread Monastery Gates Suggestion for Improvement by sasdrtx

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.