[Wikia-l] Techs, I'd like a quick opinion on whether certain pre-processingwhenediting is likel

[DanTMan]

I don't think automatic insertion of things like that is good. Things 
like that are so small, hard to define when they should actually be 
applied, and dish out to many unexpected false positives.

For example...
That "P. ##" mentioned. Even if you used a regex like /\bP\. [0-9]+\b/ 
to make absolute sure that the P isn't the end of a word... What about this:
"A amazing feat was accomplished today by Andrew P. 100 people were 
saved when he single handedly made a decision to drive his car under the 
post of an about to fall water tower. While his car was sacrificed, it 
prevented the water tower from crushing many innocent people. 
Thankfully, Andrew came out with only minor bruises."
Even with the absolute best regex or testing you could possibly come up 
with, that will still come up with a false positive, and a   will 
be inserted in between P. and 100, which are parts of two different 
sentences. And because 99% of the people you expect it to /help/ don't 
know about it, they will be at a loss to know why their sentence does 
not wrap lines correctly like it normally would.
And even as someone who would know about it, I still wouldn't spot it, 
and would to end up being utterly confused. Not to mention,  I don't 
feel like adding <nowiki/> tags into sentences where they should not be 
needed. It adds even more cruft to the page than adding a nbsp tag.

Btw...
: isn't converted into a tab... It's converted into part of a definition 
list... We call it indentation, but a list is actually being created. 
And it is markup, leading like markup just as the space, and the 3 other 
forms of leading line list markup are (*, #, ;, :).

~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of:
-The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com)
-Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
-and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com)

Dan Kindsvater wrote:
> In the online (15th ed.) Chicago Manual of Style (comes right up on a google 
> search, and they give a free one-month subscription, btw), it's 7.42 and 
> 7.43.
>
> I'm with everyone here.  I don't think the poor buggers have a chance in 
> WP:VP because they are all in favor of markup creep, but we'll see.
>
> Dan
> #wikia, #wikia-de, #wikiversity
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <rsw154 at psu.edu>
> To: <wikia-l at wikia.com>
> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 2:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [Wikia-l] Techs,I'd like a quick opinion on whether certain 
> pre-processingwhenediting is likel
>
>
>   
>> Randy Kramer wrote:
>>     
>>>    * Is that scheme of (not) wrapping a universal standard?  (I know 
>>> Strunk
>>> and White is not the right resource, but is it documented in some similar
>>> resource--I ask because I've never seen it.)
>>>       
>> Without getting into a postmodernist discussion of whether or not a 
>> universal
>> standard can be defined in the first place, the citation you are looking 
>> for is
>> _Chicago Manual of Style_ (13th ed.), sections 6.53 - 6.56:
>>  "Abbreviations used with numerals should not be separated from the 
>> numerals"
>>  "An enumerating letter or number . . . preferably should not be separated
>> from the beginning of what follows it"
>>  "Avoid breaking before a numeral adjective following a personal name"
>> Etc.
>>
>> My own opinion is that the nonbreaking spaces should be inserted by 
>> MediaWiki
>> (no markup), just as leading colons are converted into tabs.  Then the 
>> hardcore
>> editors could override it with the existing "nowiki" tag.  I write code 
>> for a
>> living and don't really notice an extra "nbsp" here and there, but I know 
>> that
>> I am in the minority there, and consequently I think we should err on the 
>> side
>> of an easy-to-read edit window, as the guy from the Marvel Comics wiki 
>> said.
>> The central wikia brags about the enormous length of Special:Listusers, 
>> but
>> actually the overwhelming majority of those people make three edits and 
>> then
>> disappear.  That needs to stop.
>>
>>
>>  --- "Ryan W"
>>
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>>     
>
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