Polls and Apostrophes

[flying_whimsy]

So at one point or another we've all seen a poll mangled by the Escapist where all of the options seem to stop mid-word, usually to cries of "I just don't know what went wrong." (Or as a poll would have it: "I just don")

It's the apostrophes, typically in contractions like "can't", "won't", et cetera; but it isn't always consistent. This thread has two goals: 1) remind everyone that using apostrophes means their polls may not display properly, and 2) ask everyone what's causing it.

Personally, I think it has to do with different coding properties regarding punctuation across mac, linux, and pc.

Why do you think the forums chew up polls with apostrophes?

 

[shrekfan246]

Polls aren't the only things that get borked by apostrophes.

Spoiler: It's a common occurrence with spoilers too, don't you know.

See what I mean? Though spoilers break with quotation marks too.

I don't have any experience with coding, so I don't really know the answer. I've certainly seen it often enough, though.

 

[Esotera]

Apostrophes and speech marks are used in some computer languages like SQL as an operator, which basically means it tells the computer to perform some function even if it doesn't make sense in the context of a word. It also doesn't help that there about 50 billion different standards of representing characters on the internet depending on what country you're in.

It is totally fixable in theory though by using character references like " to represent the apostrophe. Given the amount of polls that have suffered this fate I'm surprised that it hasn't been given higher priority...it might be worth alerting the server elves.

 

[madwarper]

While I am not sure why it happens, but I do not understand why the people creating the polls can not simply spell all the words out, instead of using contractions. See? I just did it. It is not hard.

Then again, sometimes I like to pretend the chopped option was intentional, saying that I am a mafia leader with no grasp of English grammar.
"I don. You sleep fish."

 

[DoPo]

Apostrophes and speech marks are used in some computer languages like SQL as an operator, which basically means it tells the computer to perform some function even if it doesn't make sense in the context of a word. It also doesn't help that there about 50 billion different standards of representing characters on the internet depending on what country you're in.

It is totally fixable in theory though by using character references like " to represent the apostrophe. Given the amount of polls that have suffered this fate I'm surprised that it hasn't been given higher priority...it might be worth alerting the server elves.

I'm assuming it's actually the parser that chokes up and does bad things. And I think it's only a problem if you post the thread, then get prompted to retype the CAPTCHA (because you took too long writing it).

 

[Basement Cat]

I think I know what causes Poll's questions to get mangled. Trial and error experience talking here.

I've noticed that if you enter all the questions in WITHOUT hitting the enter button--instead using your mouse to go between different questions--then the system accepts even the longest questions without any problem.

If you DO make the mistake of (reflexively) hitting Enter after entering a question then you inevitably have to spend upwards of 30 minutes re-entering and re-entering and re-entering question after question until the system uploads the questions in full.

Annoying, yes, but the correction process is largely due to the system taking several minutes to update.

Simplest to be on you guard and enter all the questions and moving between them with the mouse from point one.