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Uwe Brauer

19 Dec 2005 19 Dec '05

6:29 p.m.

Hello Some articles bear the label: this page needs to be wikified, also it looks not much different to a standard wikipedia page. My question is which html constructions are considered as evil? Thanks Uwe Brauer

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Magnus Manske

19 Dec 19 Dec

6:54 p.m.

Uwe Brauer wrote:

Hello Some articles bear the label: this page needs to be wikified, also it looks not much different to a standard wikipedia page. My question is which html constructions are considered as evil?

All of them, according to wikimarkup purists. "Wikification" means adding of [external] and [[internal|links]], have a '''bold''' title, use of * wiki-style # lists and :indentations == and headings == Categories and interwiki links are popular as well. Don't forget to add a AfD template once you're done ;-) [runs and hides] Magnus

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Gerard Meijssen

7:46 p.m.

Magnus Manske wrote:

Uwe Brauer wrote:

Hello Some articles bear the label: this page needs to be wikified, also it looks not much different to a standard wikipedia page. My question is which html constructions are considered as evil?

All of them, according to wikimarkup purists. "Wikification" means adding of [external] and [[internal|links]], have a '''bold''' title, use of * wiki-style # lists and :indentations == and headings == Categories and interwiki links are popular as well. Don't forget to add a AfD template once you're done ;-) [runs and hides] Magnus

AfD ??

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Rowan Collins

7:51 p.m.

On 19/12/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

AfD ??

"Articles for Deletion" - the over-worked discussion page for proposing page deletions on en.wikipedia. [Formerly known as "VfD", "Votes for Deletion", and constantly proposed for replacement or, ahem, deletion] -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

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Phil Boswell

20 Dec 20 Dec

9:14 a.m.

"Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske(a)web.de> wrote in message news:43A701CC.2020809@web.de...

Uwe Brauer wrote:

Hello Some articles bear the label: this page needs to be wikified, also it looks not much different to a standard wikipedia page. My question is which html constructions are considered as evil?

All of them, according to wikimarkup purists.

...which is really annoying when the perfectly legal (and thoroughly documented) <blockquote> makes much more sense than a simple ":" indentation. Maybe we should make it a requirement that you read the Help page on legitimate markup before you're allowed to summarily revert formatting :-) Maybe...I should put it into a template [runs and hides behing Magnus ;-] -- Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

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Yaroslav Fedevych

10:04 a.m.

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:14:06AM -0000, Phil Boswell wrote:

"Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske(a)web.de> wrote in message news:43A701CC.2020809@web.de...

Uwe Brauer wrote:

Hello Some articles bear the label: this page needs to be wikified, also it looks not much different to a standard wikipedia page. My question is which html constructions are considered as evil?

All of them, according to wikimarkup purists.

...which is really annoying when the perfectly legal (and thoroughly documented) <blockquote> makes much more sense than a simple ":" indentation. Maybe we should make it a requirement that you read the Help page on legitimate markup before you're allowed to summarily revert formatting :-) Maybe...I should put it into a template [runs and hides behing Magnus ;-]

When I consider what can be taken as legal wiki markup (when, say, writing a "third-party" wikicruncher), I have a general rule of thumb that everything per XHTML DTD inside <body>...</body> except <style>, <script> and maybe <object> must be parsed properly and considered legal; plus all those nice and not so nice quirks carefully piled onto each other by wikimedians for years. When I write my own wiki pages (not on wikipedia), I generate wiki markup wherever possible, except that '' and ''' irritate me, as well as having no wiki way to do multi-paragraph list items. -- * I think we all need to take our teachers with multiple grains of salt. They have, after all, figured out their stuff at a much slower pace than they try to teach us. Something is bound to get lost in that process.

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Rowan Collins

1:48 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:14:06AM -0000, Phil Boswell wrote: > ...which is really annoying when the perfectly legal (and thoroughly > documented) <blockquote> makes much more sense than a simple ":" > indentation. Maybe we should make it a requirement that you read the Help > page on legitimate markup before you're allowed to summarily revert > formatting :-)

Well, I would think that reading a lone ":" as equivalent to "<blockquote>" (or something else sensible), if that could be implemented sanely, would be preferable; but I'm not sure that people sprinkling big ugly "<blockquote>...</blockquote>" blocks in the middle of wikitext is all that good an idea. But then, I guess I tend towards "wikimarkup purism", in that I like to think of wikitext as completely independent of HTML, and all "borrowings" from one to the other as somewhat unfortunate. On 20/12/05, Yaroslav Fedevych <jaroslaw(a)linux.org.ua> wrote:

When I consider what can be taken as legal wiki markup (when, say, writing a "third-party" wikicruncher), I have a general rule of thumb that everything per XHTML DTD inside <body>...</body> except <style>, <script> and maybe <object> must be parsed properly and considered legal; plus all those nice and not so nice quirks carefully piled onto each other by wikimedians for years.

There is actually, I believe, an HTML-tag whitelist in the code somewhere, which is probably reasonably stable and thus authoritative [though I can't find it at the sec]. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

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Phil Boswell

3:05 p.m.

"Rowan Collins" <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:9f02ca4c0512200548k7ea50e24x@mail.gmail.com...

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:14:06AM -0000, Phil Boswell wrote:

...which is really annoying when the perfectly legal (and thoroughly documented) <blockquote> makes much more sense than a simple ":" indentation. Maybe we should make it a requirement that you read the Help page on legitimate markup before you're allowed to summarily revert formatting :-)

Well, I would think that reading a lone ":" as equivalent to "<blockquote>" (or something else sensible), if that could be implemented sanely, would be preferable; but I'm not sure that people sprinkling big ugly "<blockquote>...</blockquote>" blocks in the middle of wikitext is all that good an idea.

I tend towards liking "least surprise". <blockquote> is obviously for tagging a block which is quoted from somewhere. If you haven't noticed (and surprisingly many have not, no matter how long they have been on Wikipedia), <blockquote> introduces indents on **both** margins. It also allows the use of CSS styling. It is almost never needed to nest them. The ":" syntax appears to be purely for successively indenting questions and replies in conversations: any other usage seems to be serendipitous. It is actually implemented as <dd> tags within nested <dl> containers. For those lucky enough not to have much exposure to HTML, that is actually intended for use as a "Definition List". The seldom used "; :" syntax, which produces a bold header followed by an indented paragraph, is actually the correct way to use the <dl> and <dd> tags. Just to check, everybody does know that they are actually writing in HTML, using a rather esoteric shorthand, right? :-) HTH HAND -- Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

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Uwe Brauer

2:30 p.m.

>>>> "Phil" == Phil Boswell writes:

> Uwe Brauer wrote: >> > All of them, according to wikimarkup purists.

Phil> ...which is really annoying when the perfectly legal (and Phil> thoroughly documented) <blockquote> makes much more sense Phil> than a simple ":" indentation. Maybe we should make it a Right, I find the : and :# :* especially annoying since, they only work for one single (long line) but not for a paragraph. That's why I prefer much <blockquote> </blockquote> over : etc. So I understand correctly the use of such constructs and <ol> <li> </ol> Is ok? Uwe Brauer

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Magnus Manske

3:48 p.m.

Uwe Brauer wrote:

>>>>"Phil" == Phil Boswell writes: >>>> >>>>

> Uwe Brauer wrote: >> > All of them, according to wikimarkup purists.

Phil> ...which is really annoying when the perfectly legal (and Phil> thoroughly documented) <blockquote> makes much more sense Phil> than a simple ":" indentation. Maybe we should make it a Right, I find the : and :# :* especially annoying since, they only work for one single (long line) but not for a paragraph. That's why I prefer much <blockquote> </blockquote> over : etc. So I understand correctly the use of such constructs and <ol> <li> </ol> Is ok?

IMHO blockquote is OK, as we do not have an equivalent in wiki markup. We do, however, have wiki markup for lists, in which case wiki markup is always preferred. Same goes for tables (yes, the syntax is weird), <hr>, bold/italics, dd/dt. Magnus

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Uwe Brauer

21 Dec 21 Dec

12:17 p.m.

>>>> "Magnus" == Magnus Manske

Magnus> IMHO blockquote is OK, as we do not have an equivalent in Magnus> wiki markup. Magnus> We do, however, have wiki markup for lists, in which case Magnus> wiki markup is always preferred. Same goes for tables (yes, Magnus> the syntax is weird), <hr>, bold/italics, dd/dt. The wiki syntax has, as I said some inconvenience with respect to line breaks, so seriously now: What is the *problem* in using HTML constructs? Speed in parsing? Uwe Brauer

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Rowan Collins

12:34 p.m.

On 21/12/05, Uwe Brauer <oub(a)mat.ucm.es> wrote:

What is the *problem* in using HTML constructs? Speed in parsing?

I think the main problem is *consistency* - if you're trying to let as many people edit as possible, having multiple variants of markup for doing [nearly] the same thing just makes everything that much harder to learn, and gives people that much more chance to be baffled when looking at the source. Of course, you could consistently use a subset of HTML, and some would argue that that's at least as easy to learn as the arcane "punctuation soup" wiki-markups. But in a wiki that did that I would then disagree with someone who said "why don't we use the wiki-markup for italics, they're so much easier to type". -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

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David Gerard

7:33 p.m.

Rowan Collins wrote:

On 21/12/05, Uwe Brauer <oub(a)mat.ucm.es> wrote:

>What is the *problem* in using HTML constructs? Speed in parsing?

I think the main problem is *consistency* - if you're trying to let as many people edit as possible, having multiple variants of markup for doing [nearly] the same thing just makes everything that much harder to learn, and gives people that much more chance to be baffled when looking at the source.

HTML was invented as a human-writable language. Unfortunately, the humans in question were computer-literate physicists at CERN, and less technically-minded humans have a lot of trouble with it. Do you remember looking at web page source code in 1995/1996? "Tag soup." People used tag soup because they wanted a result on the page, and never mind the programming formalisms. The advantage of wikitext for mere humans is that it starts working as plain text, then you can add wikitext soup to it and you still get a result that nontechnical people can read and write. Wikitext is formally horrible, but seems to work with human editors. Wikipedia is one of those wonderful pieces of technology that works for technophobes *and* advanced geeks (e.g. Mac OS X, LiveJournal, Firefox) - which I think should be a goal of all programs where possible, btw. People learn wikitext like learning a language. They try stuff and it gets meaning across. They learn more and it gets more of the meaning across. They gain proficiency as they go. - d.

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Ray Saintonge

22 Dec 22 Dec

12:34 p.m.

David Gerard wrote:

The advantage of wikitext for mere humans is that it starts working as plain text, then you can add wikitext soup to it and you still get a result that nontechnical people can read and write. Wikitext is formally horrible, but seems to work with human editors. Wikipedia is one of those wonderful pieces of technology that works for technophobes *and* advanced geeks (e.g. Mac OS X, LiveJournal, Firefox) - which I think should be a goal of all programs where possible, btw. People learn wikitext like learning a language. They try stuff and it gets meaning across. They learn more and it gets more of the meaning across. They gain proficiency as they go.

This is perhaps one of the factors in Wikipedia's success. For people who want to write text only the only essential wiki knowledge may be to add an extra carriage return to separate paragraphs. Ec

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Tels

27 Dec 27 Dec

12:01 p.m.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Moin, On Thursday 22 December 2005 13:34, Ray Saintonge wrote:

David Gerard wrote:

The advantage of wikitext for mere humans is that it starts working as plain text, then you can add wikitext soup to it and you still get a result that nontechnical people can read and write. Wikitext is formally horrible, but seems to work with human editors. Wikipedia is one of those wonderful pieces of technology that works for technophobes *and* advanced geeks (e.g. Mac OS X, LiveJournal, Firefox) - which I think should be a goal of all programs where possible, btw. People learn wikitext like learning a language. They try stuff and it gets meaning across. They learn more and it gets more of the meaning across. They gain proficiency as they go.

This is perhaps one of the factors in Wikipedia's success. For people who want to write text only the only essential wiki knowledge may be to add an extra carriage return to separate paragraphs.

And this is also the reason I "invented" a new "language" for my graph extension - the graphviz code is a language that is written by programmers for programmers, e.g. "normal" people struggle a lot with it. I really like the easyness of the wiki syntax and the table code in wiki is IMHO much better than the dreaded "<table>" tag soup you usually end up. My € 0.02, Tels - -- Signed on Tue Dec 27 12:59:39 2005 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email. "Eat, eat, eat, eat the delicious sandwich!" -- Elan the Bard (Order of the Stick)

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Aron Rubin

21 Dec 21 Dec

10:36 p.m.

Magnus Manske wrote:

Uwe Brauer wrote:

Right, I find the : and :# :* especially annoying since, they only work for one single (long line) but not for a paragraph. That's why I prefer much <blockquote> </blockquote> over : etc. So I understand correctly the use of such constructs and Is ok?

IMHO blockquote is OK, as we do not have an equivalent in wiki markup. We do, however, have wiki markup for lists, in which case wiki markup is always preferred. Same goes for tables (yes, the syntax is weird), <hr>, bold/italics, dd/dt.

I have taken to generating some templates like Template:" (aka Template:%22) for example which is specified as: <blockquote><p>{{{1}}}</p></blockquote> written this looks like: {{"|This is a quoted set of text}} I suppose you could also do something like this for Template:" : <blockquote><p>{{{1}}}</p><cite>{{{2}}}</cite></blockquote> used like this: {{"|This is quoted text| Aron Rubin}} Aron -- ssh aron(a)rubinium.org cat /dev/brain | grep ^work: Aron Rubin Member, Engineering Staff Lockheed Martin E-Mail: arubin(a)atl.lmco.com Advanced Technology Laboratories Phone: 3 Executive Campus Fax: Cherry Hill, NJ USA 08002 Web: http://www.atl.lmco.com

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participants (10)

Aron Rubin
David Gerard
Gerard Meijssen
Magnus Manske
Phil Boswell
Ray Saintonge
Rowan Collins
Tels
Uwe Brauer
Yaroslav Fedevych