For some time, work has been ongoing on a merge of the Poem extension into MediaWiki core [1] [2]. (For those not aware, this extension [3] implements a simple <poem> tag which, among other things, preserves newlines.)

Several developers have expressed the desire for an alternative name for this tag, alongside <poem> (which of course will be kept for backward compatibility). This is because the tag is sometimes used for various other uses besides poetry.

There were many suggestions (see the bug report [1]), but it was eventually agreed to use Michael M.'s suggestion of <lines>. This name puts the focus on the individual "lines" of the content, which is exactly what the tag is doing.

We almost had a collision with a previous proposal (<verbatim> conflicted with a tag in use on Wikia), so we wish to ensure that no-one else is using <lines>. No-one is yet aware of any MediaWiki extensions or other code using a tag named <lines> in wikitext.

If you think the name <lines> will be an issue, or if you have any other concerns with this merge, please speak up, either here or at the bug report.

TTO

-- [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52061 [2] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/106861/ [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Poem