I can't reproduce this. Are you sure this isn't the difference between an HTML copy/paste and a plain-text copy/paste?

For me it's never converted, in both Chrome and Opera, regardless of the space.

In T129454#2109012, @Elitre wrote:

For me it's never converted, in both Chrome and Opera, regardless of the space.

Did you copy the text directly out of Phab? Instead of doing that, try copying it from Phab into a text box (e.g. the wikitext editor, or the search box), then copying it from there into VE.

I'm in Safari/Mac today and it works even if I copy/paste it from Phab directly, both with and without the initial space.

I retried it on xubuntu 14.04, Firefox 44 and Chromium 48:

• no problem without a space or by pasting the wikitext first on a text box
• still a problem with a space