Dear Livejournal

[bryant]

Why would I ever want to see the full raw text of broken HTML when you can't interpret an entry? If I can edit the entry, I can see the raw HTML that way. If I can't edit the entry, I don't much want to see it.

Comments

[kodi]

You'll be sorry the day you post "<b need help call police </b>" and livejournal displays a totally blank entry.

[head58.livejournal.com]

On the other hand that whole "

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<strike [...] priest?</strike>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

On the other hand that whole "<strike will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?</strike>" thing could have gone better...

[ghudson.livejournal.com]

I've appreciated being able to read the raw HTML when people post broken HTML. In the case of your recent post, I clicked through to the source blog because that was easier, but otherwise I would have read the HTML.

[bryant]

I like being able to read the raw HTML, but I can always hit "view source" which sort of solves the problem. So it's marginally more convenient for me, but annoying for people who don't care.

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

"View source" only works if LJ puts the bad html out its http port anyway... in some ways I'm glad it detects bad html in one entry and *stops* it going out, because it keeps other people's mistakes from messing up my entire friends page.

Now, here's a thought... if you're going to detect bad html, try to repair it, fail, and then shield me from it, could you go to the trouble of putting in a cut tag, LJ? Something like "( raw html behind cut )" that would be awesome

[flit.livejournal.com]

It's barfing.

[halfway-back.livejournal.com]

That's not the bodily function I would associate with it.

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can think of, is perhaps someone *else* will tell me exactly how to fix my broken-down html, if I happen to be html-clueless.

Maybe I can sympathize for entries

[dtm]

But for comments, showing the raw source in event of html screw-up is really nice; consider the third comment here: http://dtm.livejournal.com/37659.html

Re: Maybe I can sympathize for entries

[bryant]

Having it available is nice. Showing it... yeah.

Something like:

The raw HTML of the failed post/comment is recorded as an HTML comment below. View Source to see it.

<!-- raw HTML goes here -->

Would be more elegant.