On Stack Overflow (and Meta.SO), the standard leading used with bulleted lists has minimal vertical space between each line. If you want to increase the leading, you can insert a space between the first and second items in the list, which [instructs Markdown to wrap things in a `<p>` tag](https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help#simple-lists).

This has apparently been disrupted on many (all?) of the SE 2.0 sites.<sup>†</sup> The standard leading is much too wide, and there is no change when you insert a space between list items. Despite this, the [editing help still says the same thing as Stack Overflow](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/editing-help#simple-lists).

Compare the following two screenshots—SO is first, then one of the SE 2.0 sites:  
(The screenshots show bulleted lists, but this applies equally to numbered lists.)

![][1]

----

![][2]

I suppose this *might* not be considered a bug, but rather by design, with theory going something like "more leading makes things easier to read, and the non-tech savvy audience of the SE 2.0 sites won't necessarily know to insert a space between their list items". The problem with this approach is two-fold:

 1. Too much leading can be just as hard to read as too little, [as the Wikipedia article demonstrates](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading).
 2. If something is truly hard to use or undiscoverable, that should be solved by improving the documentation for the feature, not by introducing inconsistencies. That just makes it worse.


<sub><sup>†</sup> At first, I thought it was connected to [the new Grainy theme](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126185/new-stack-exchange-beta-theme), but it seems to also be the case on sites like Skeptics, which use their own custom theme.</sub>


  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/F5L3P.png
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/0Zmii.png