Moderator post: Please avoid excessive text formatting

[ron_newman]

I've seen a few complaints about this lately, so I'd like to propose a new rule:

Please keep text formatting to an essential minimum when posting to davis_square. In particular, please try not to do not:

- specify an explicit <font> face, size, or color, especially at the outermost (top) level of your post
- paste formatted text into the Rich Text editor from Microsoft Word or another word processor

Doing these things often makes your post less readable on other people's friends pages, or results in text that looks too big or too small on some screens. In at least one case, I recall it generating huge numbers of blank lines at the end of a post, because of a <span> or <div> tag that got pasted in from Microsoft Word.

Thanks for your cooperation. After some discussion here, I'll probably add this to the rules on the community's profile page.

Comments

[303-5.livejournal.com]

I think the rule is fair enough, though as a poster of one of the example posts, above, I'll offer the perspective of a first-time creator of a new post. I find much of the framework and structure of LJ confusing and non-intuitive and my added text formatting was inadvertent--I was fumbling my way through trying to "make it look right" after a few screw ups in trying to create the post. Nevertheless, I'll try to refrain from unnecessarily hitting any of the format buttons in the future.

While I support constructive feedback to perceived offenders, I would also hope that there remain mercy for what I am sure are other oft-frustrated folks still trying to figure out the LJ system (and formatting in general).

And, for now, I'll leave the original post with the bad formatting so that I don't ruin the example.

[303-5.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that I think about it, my original text may have been copied and pasted from Microsoft Word (I don't fully remember)--that may have been where I initially went wrong.

[ron_newman]

Thanks for your gracious reply. I did not intend to call you out intentionally. I'm just hoping that if we put a rule like this in the community profile, new users will be less likely to do this in the future.

As a Mac Safari user, I never see LJ's Rich Text editor. Even Firefox on the Mac doesn't accept formatted pasting from word processors. Until recently, I didn't realize that the Rich Text editor was the likely cause of these posts.