I just noticed that <pre> tags allowed that <p> tags were included which is against the meaning of "pre-formatting".

pre-blocks are now excluded from any wiki-expansion

<pre>
*a* /b/
# 2 newlines following

https://perlmonks.org/
</pre>
[download]

displays now as

*a* /b/
# 2 newlines following

https://perlmonks.org/

update

<blockquote> are now also excluded, but that's experimental.