[wp-forums] Pasting Code

Sun Sep 10 22:30:07 GMT 2006

Les Bessant wrote:
> How about making the forums *a lot* more friendly for newcomers?
> 
> Without looking at the innards of the forum code, this is just a guess, but
> surely it wouldn't be too big a job to add the equivalent of Quicktags? Not
> a lot of them, but one for "code" and one for "link" would make things a lot
> easier for less technically-minded users, and save a lot of work for
> mods....

I see this sort of change as being significant yet discreet and
therefore having a higher chance of implementation. It does of course
have an implication - if it's there people will use it more possibly and
I don't care how you format it, I don't want to see a whole theme file.
Or CSS.
The other implication is line length and wrapping - people may expect a
perfect copy and it ain't going to happen.
The single best place for code is a pastebin.
It's not db size that's the problem, it's readability. And that applies
even to vBulletin and phpBB forums that I have to use.

Anyway - it's small stuff that matters most. The big structural changes
that are being mentioned will not work unless pagination is fixed for
instance. Moving the forum list around, not having recent posts - they
are what we _think_ will help but there are the broken elements and
subtle improvements which I think should be aimed for first. One issue
for instance is fixing blog admin - it's broken.
Signposts to how to post is needed too as has been mentioned.
Small stuff - that's where it's at.

P.