In this case, it makes sense because the author was trying to preserve the line breaks in the original poem, which give cadence to the writing and are integral to the work.

Don't blame the commenter. Blame HN for having broken <pre> blocks (or at least for consuming single line breaks otherwise).

They can't be that integral, since I didn't even realize it was supposed to be a poem until it was pointed out.

At least the GP used short lines... I hate those single-line code-blocked long comments.

A gift for you: https://www.eternum.io/ipfs/QmVARCKc4tqh82csydiAQ2JVmvvKeckm...

eternum.io looks really interesting and like something that can help move ipfs into mainstream.

I see this more and more. Why is there a recent trend to use codeblocks instead of > ? Is there a popular platform where codeblocks are quotes?

Because HN doesn't preserve line-breaks and `>` doesn't do anything. You'd have to double-space the entire poem which is just silly.

HN should just preserve all line-breaks so we don't have to hack around it.

HN preserves linebreaks. It's the paragraph formatting that gets in the way of poetry like the above.

No it doesn't

(The above was written "No\nit\ndoesn't")

You may be referring to some sort of distinction here, but I'm just talking about newlines.

No, just a brainfart. I was thinking of something else. Sorry.

Or it could do what Markdown does and preserve line-breaks that end in double spaces.

Invisible markup doesn't look like a good idea.

It works just fine for Markdown, I don't see why it wouldn't work equally well here.

I think you (and many valiant others) are fighting a losing battle here. God forbid HN should allow a quote style, that'd be so bloaty.

I suggested this before; according to 'dang it would break the spam filter. I'm unclear on the details.

Sigh. Or at least render code blocks nicely on mobile.

It's not related to mobile, the problem is the very small maxwidth that forces scrolling. Happens on the desktop too and is unnecessary.

Turn your phone to landscape orientation? :)

Nothing valiant about telling users not to use a standard feature. Double-plus anti-valiant to suggest prioritizing mobile over desktop.