Template:Blockquote paragraphs

Due to the utterly intractable MediaWiki bug reported at Template:Bugzilla, and still unfixed as of February 2012^[update], block quoting on Wikipedia, with or without a template, cannot handle freeform linebreaking for paragraphs and poems and the like, unless formatted one very specific (and annoying) way. It's not a problem of blockquote templates, but all uses of <blockquote>.

The problem in action: test cases that seem like they should work but fail

The intuitive choice:

{{bq|Line 1
Line 2 Line 3
Line 4}}

results in the mangled:

Template:Bq

Blank lines seem to work at first:

{{bq|Line 1
Line 2 Line 3
Line 4}}

though with quite tall spacing between the content blocks (lines, in our test cases):

Template:Bq

Yet this markup fails with wiki ":" citation:

Template:Bq

Just trying to use ... or   markup won't solve all the problems:

{{bq|Line 1 
Line 2 Line 3 
Line 4}}

results in odd spacing, with the middle blocks too close together:

Template:Bq

Meanwhile this version seems OK at first:

{{bq|Line 1
Line 2 Line 3
Line 4}}

Template:Bq

but again can't be indented in citation:

Template:Bq

As of February 2012^[update], the only solution for the problem is to use unbroken markup with ... or   elements (or others, like nested blockquotes and lists):

{{bq|Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4.}}

which, while hard to read, especially for long content, results in the expected:

Template:Bq

And it does work with wikimarkup ":" citation, unlike the failed test cases hereinbefore:

Template:Bq

Happily, there is a HTML comment workaround for readability that lets you do whatever you want:

{{bq|1=Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4.}}

or even:

{{bq|1=Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4.}}

which results in the expected:

Template:Bq

They are citable:

Template:Bq