MetaTalk posts tagged with formatting

you're gonna love my blockquotes

boo_radley — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:12:53 -0800

I would like a small formatting pony. The blockquote tag is boring. Stop having a boring blockquote tag. Could there be a line on the left side or other indicator for blockquoting?

First things first.

washburn — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:55:12 -0800

Can we more strongly encourage posters to make their first link their most important one? Call me short of attention, but I appreciate it when long multi-link posts put their main link first, to be followed by explanation and context, etc. However I notice that many posts (such as this Emo Philips post, to take the latest example) require readers to sift through a bunch of links to find the one that's supposed to deliver the strongest punch. I know that the posting screen already implicitly encourages posters to begin with the main link, by including an "optional" "link URL" entry field. However, I'd suggest that the posting screen (or at least the posting guidelines) be revised a bit, to more strongly suggest that as a matter of policy the the best link should go first, unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Preformatted text formatting

knave — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:00:30 -0800

Can we fix the <pre>formatted text bug where the live preview looks perfect, but the actual post ends up double-spaced? You can create a preformatted text block correctly by using <br> tags instead of line breaks, but that's extremely hard to do when you're pasting a big block of text in. Broken example:

    one
    two
    three

Working example:

    one
    two
    three

Can't tell who said what

nax — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:34:16 -0800

What happened to put quotes in italics?

AskMe formatting wonkiness

FortyT-wo — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:14:03 -0800

Regarding the AskMe RSS feed formating - Currently there is no line break between the question and the [more inside]. Sometimes this makes for an odd run-on and repetitive paragraph that isn't what the poster intended. Since screen real-estate isn't a problem in the feed, might the powers-that-be consider throwing a paragraph between these sections? I use google reader but it's also formatted the same way in bloglines if this helps.

MP3 and PDF tags

stbalbach — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:36:02 -0800

You know those little MP3 or PDF tags on Wikipedia external links (see last external link), informing users they are about to click on a special file along with the file size? That would sure be nice for MeFi.

Line Break Issues in "Preview"

jimmyjimjim — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:03:11 -0800

It's pretty annoying that inserting carriage returns shows line breaks as typed in the "preview" window, but the final result is breakless (after all, what's the point of the preview?). I've had unpredictable results manually adding "BR" tags and "P" tags...they seem to sporadically interact with the typed carriage returns and yield vast white space. If anyone can point me to a workaround, I'd be appreciative. But, really, it'd be fitting if postings posted per the preview, no?

Contact List Formatting

brownpau — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:44:22 -0800

A quick formatting request for the contacts lists: "links to" and "linked by" as vertical lists side by side rather than as blocks of inline text. Also, a little icon to indicate mutual contacts, and a little plus sign to add new non-mutual contacts from the "linked by" list. I have the del.icio.us contacts list in mind.

Giant stone statues shrink Recent Activity

flabdablet — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:29:48 -0800

When this post shows up in Recent Activity, the long small-text quote gets truncated, the <small> tag is never closed, and the rest of Recent Activity is rendered small.

RSS vs. Page formatting

vacapinta — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:37:52 -0800

Why does this question lose all formatting even though it is formatted in my RSS reader? Doesn't appear to have happened to other questions nearby.

Older and Newer links

stopgap — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:06:03 -0800

Can the “« Older” and “Newer »” links at the bottom of post pages use the post titles of the adjacent posts rather than the first few words truncated with an ellipsis?

The New Left. No, wait...

weapons-grade pandemonium — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:45:36 -0800

Small inconsistency. On members' posts/comments pages, < newer / older>> point opposite to all the regular pages, which are < older / newer>>. Not terribly annoying, but easy to fix, no?

Brevity is the soul of. . . what again?

bardic — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:28:22 -0800

Flagging a post as "too long."

An end to [more inside] "witticism".

roofus — Fri, 11 May 2007 09:41:47 -0800

Could the "Post" button on new AskMe questions trigger a script to check that the first part of the question ends either in a "." or a "?"? This would bring an end to the [more inside] "witticisms" (e.g. Assuredly there's [more inside]). I realise it is minor, and that I have also once been guilty of propagating this lame disruptive meme.

Office chair question bug

allkindsoftime — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:56:12 -0800

Is there a bug in this question? Looks fine on its own page, but on the main AskMe page it starts with the second sentence: "But this time...". Perhaps something to do with the fact that the first sentence is identical to the title?

Preferred method of quoting others' comment?

psmealey — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:27:37 -0800

What's the proper method for quoting a commenter in a thread? For years, I had taken to just posting the thought in italics and nothing else. More and more however, I notice people pulling out the quote with the post date/time and user name. Are both methods acceptable? Neither? Better to link to the comment in question and not quote it at all? Please hope me.

Tiny text is hard to read!

canine epigram — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:08:28 -0800

The tiny text that some posters tend to use as asides (example here in miss lynsters comment) is truly hard to read in anything longer than a sentence, particularly for those of us born to the mole people. This seems to be the best place as any other to ask that people consider that [small] font is rather difficult to read in chunks! ( I realize that yes, the actual answer is to Ctrl-+ on FireFox read it and reverse, but then everything else goes huge. )

I broke my FPP!

your mildly obsessive average geek — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 01:33:44 -0800

So despite reading the MeFi Wiki and crunchland's profile, I managed to screw up my FPP ( this one ) and it now appears on the home page without a title. Would one of the admins be kind enough to correct the link title of the post? You may also suggest suitable means of atonement for this extremely n00b-ish screwup.

Where does the via go?

dabitch — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:58:24 -0800

Dear Mefi. What is the proper etiquette for the [via]? Some go inside, others on the front.

href... slash... a.... dammit!

nanojath — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 11:47:31 -0800

Is it just me, or did my autoformatting buttons vanish with my last Firefox update (I assume this is the cause, as the two coincided)? If I have to start hand-coding hyperlinks again I will probably just go into an unresponsive fugue state instead.

Better way to link

SteveInMaine — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:16:34 -0800

Is there be a better way to automate links in comments and answers?

Youtube posts could be playlists.

Eideteker — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:10:02 -0800

A suggestion for Youtube (music video) posts: playlists. [how-to inside]

pulling out info from pages without anchors

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 07:22:24 -0800

FPP question.

In making up an art centered post, I'm finding lots of great images with data that describes the particular piece of art. However, the art and data about it is on a web page with other pictures (sometimes relate, sometimes not)and the specific pieces I want to use do NOT have anchers. The data about the images is important, because the images are part of a storytelling genre/style and the data helps shed light on the images (which are at least 100 years old usually).

So would it be better to link to just the images or link to the web page and just mention that you have to scroll?

Playing time of video in superscript? Annoying!

chunking express — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:17:09 -0800

Is this the first time someone has linked to videos with the playing time in superscript? Am I the only one who finds it really annoying?

vestigial more inside sentences

i8ny3x — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:37:20 -0800

In askmefi, I occasionally see some posts where the first question field ends with "of course ..." as if the rest of the sentence is cut off. In older posts, though, that phrase usually ends with "... there's more" as in "of course there's more." Is it because it's an askmefi cliche and that metafilter users are perpetuating it as a joke, or if it's because that particular sentence is automatically truncated by admins who deem it unnecessary because of the [more inside] denotation?