[wp-hackers] Putting the P in WordPress

[Stephen Rider]

On Jul 5, 2010, at 6:18 PM, Andrew Nacin wrote:

> Please remove the following
> filters from your installs: emoticons, autop, shortcodes, texturize, special
> characters, curly quotes, tag balancing, filtered HTML / kses, comment link
> nofollows, and surely others.

This is a Straw Man argument.  Those are mostly *formatting*, not content. They can be turned off in settings or by switching to HTML editor.  Short codes are almost certainly not used *without the author's knowledge*.

The only example I need is the absurdity that it is now impossible to use WordPress to write a post showing people the right and wrong way to capitalize the program's name.

Add it to spell check?  Great!  Just change it on the fly?  Don't like it at all.

The closest comparison I can think of is Microsoft Word's AutoCorrect function. That would actually be a very nice thing to add to WordPress, but note that in Word it's very easy to go into the AutoCorrect list and add/remove items from the correction list.

And no, saying "anyone can write a plugin that does it" isn't the answer.  It shouldn't require programming knowledge, or an entire plugin, to alter this behavior.

> As written by Andrew Ozz:
> 
>> I'm still being amazed by how a well meant effort to correct a common
>> spelling mistake can be turned into a .... (insert your favourite conspiracy
>> theory here).

Another Straw Man.  Nobody's claiming conspiracy.  I have no doubt that it was well intended, but it's a very bad precedent.  The Road to Hell and all that....

No doubt my little missive will not shift the Powers What Is, but I felt it should be said anyway.

Personally I think the **worst** thing to come of this is the attitude that the "higher ups" have shown towards the people who disagree with this change.  It comes off as arrogant, and acting as though the opinions of the "rank and file" contributors is unimportant in the face of your personal foibles is not a good way to grow or maintain the community -- and again, a very bad precedent to set.

-- 
Stephen

"Daddy?" I asked sweetly, "Are we lost?"
"Shut up," he explained