It was discussed here many times and essentially everyone concurred that the general perlmonks input form needs improvement. Too many new posters leave out p and c-tags, because the relevant information is slightly hidden behind a few of the 7(!) links below the input form

Yes, it would be nice if people would read the information behind all these links, but someone with a burning question on his or her mind will be quite exhausted at the latest after reading three packed pages of information on just How do I compose an effective node title?

What was missing until now was a proposal exactly how to change the input form. So here it is, a relatively small change, but maybe enough to get the rate of borked beginner postings noticably down:

**** input form ****
**preview button**

  • Please use <p> </p>-tags around your paragraphs and <c> </c>-tags around your code and data
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • ...

    • PS: The bold face of the added text is part of my proposal, not just a hint what was changed

    UPDATE: The proposed change was incorporated almost immediately it seems.

    In reply to Change of the input form. Proposal by jethro

    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.