use of alerts on the help wiki

[Andrew Sayers]

Matthew East wrote:
> Do you feel strongly about this point?

Well if you're saying the evidence is that it's less usable, then that's
got to take precedent.  That said, here's my position:

I'm talking to you now because I saw people creating alerts manually,
then tried to make a better one, then decided it was a problem that was
better automated, thought to mention it as an aside to another e-mail,
happened to notice that macros exist and aren't hard, and so on.  My
concern is that projects only get contributors if they provide every one
of those stepping stones.

I'm still not sure I understand the problem - is it an issue of typos or
confusion?  It would be trivial to create a <<Hint(foo)>> macro that
runs <<Alert(Hint: foo)>> internally, which would give us both
interfaces - would that be any better?

> One other point: I've noticed that the newer implementation of the
> macro breaks if the user is logged out: let me know if you can't
> reproduce that and I'll send you the traceback. The problem wasn't
> present with the older implementation.

I can't replicate it on my laptop - if you have time to send a traceback
 before tonight, please do.  Otherwise I'll have a go when I'm back home.

	- Andrew