List of Markdown badges, no not Discourse badges, those little images that look like flags on some sites

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This is a great example in the “ChatGPT will make things worse” column.

Specifically:

  • “The ![DOI] syntax specifies that the image will be used to represent the DOI” is strictly wrong — that is part of the syntax to specify an image in Markdown — the ! indicates that the following link (using the regular Markdown link syntax) is to an URL for an image file that should be displayed inline. The [DOI] part is simply the alt text for that link.
  • The “second part of the markdown” isn’t really the second part, but actually _wraps around the entire “first part” — including the first [ on a line.
  • If you don’t already understand how markdown works, the last sentence is very misleading — it wouldn’t be useful at all in a web page or documentation that doesn’t have a way to render that markdown into something (like HTML) for display.

In short: ChatGPT is fun to play with, but if you’re using it for learning, you’re probably being mislead. And please do not recycle its output uncritically for helping others — that’s basically “human-washing” the output, making it seem more likely to be legitimate.

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