Weird Forum Bugs

By Antistone, in Support

I've more or less gotten used to the inscrutable quote tags. Sure, all the other forums I use manage to have simple, understandable quote tags that can be created and edited by hand, and requiring the number of the post being quoted doesn't even potentially make sense unless you're actually going to hyperlink to that post or guarantee the accuracy of the quote or something...but it's a usable system. Albeit with some unnecessary complication, labor and pain for no perceptible benefit, but still, usable.

The thing where quotes get converted into an even more obscure and delicate format when you try to edit them or nest them is inconvenient and arbitrary. Lots of people are afraid to even try editing a post with quotes in it for fear of irrecoverably destroying all the formatting, though through trial and error I've discovered that there seem to be some invisible characters in the post that control the quote blocks, so now I can usually pull it off with nothing worse than some random white space appearing or disappearing for no clear reason.

The preview button is kind of pointless and misleading if it's only going to reproduce the text in the text box, instead of previewing things like quote blocks how they will actually look in the published post. But I guess it doesn't actively hurt (compared to simply not having this simple and obvious feature that every other forum seems to have). Well, other than confusing new users.

The page that alerts you that new replies have been posted while you were editing after you click publish is actually helpful. Though the thing where it inserts an extra copy of the entire post you're quoting at the front of the post you composed is downright mean , especially because if you hit publish again before you notice, you're then terrified to edit the post and try to fix it, due to the aforementioned quote bugs.

But now, apparently, the forum is stripping consecutive hyphens from everything I post. Single hyphens are OK, and I can edit a double-hyphen into the post later without problem, but if there are any in my original compositon, they simply disappear without warning or explanation.

Admittedly, if I were a serious typographer, I probably wouldn't use a double-hyphen as a substitute for an em dash, but come on. Can someone please get a few of these gremlins under control?