Spoiler markup: ____________________

Question

it's being overused.

---

What? You don't find my title helpful? You had no idea what you were going to read before you opened the question...I see.

This site is getting on the Stack Exchange Hot List a lot lately! I've been clicking over fairly often and finding good stuff to read. I'm also finding quite a bit of this:

My answer is:

the mastofan must have looked for the plumtin on the blask but not seen it there, since you imply that nothing has emergated since the last derotiring.

This is (as I opined more bluntly elsewhere) not a particularly useful post.

Answerers using markup like this have a courteous goal: they want to avoid giving away a puzzle's solution for readers so that those readers can work on it themselves. I do appreciate that, but I think this is entirely the wrong way to go about it.

The thing is, the above isn't any better for me as a reader than this:

The mastofan must have looked for the plumtin on the blask but not seen it there, since you imply that nothing has emergated since the last derotiring.

because I still only have the choice to read all of the answer, or none of the answer.

If it's really considered necessary to use spoiler markup here, it's totally possible -- even easy -- to hide the kernel of the answer but reveal all the surrounding sentence structure so that a reader can follow along. Doing this gives me a very clear idea about what kind of thing is hidden without knowing what that thing is.

The mastofan must have looked for the plumtin

on the blask

but not seen it there, since you imply that nothing has

emergated

since the last

derotering.

Granted, all the linebreaks are a bummer. Inline spoilers would be nice. But a taller answer is still preferable, to my mind, to one that has no visible content.

I'm obviously not a active posting member of this site (goose egg there), but I have become an avid consumer of it. I'm writing from that perspective.

I've suggested a number of edits over the last couple of days to try to help out, and set an example for good spoiler usage. Here's three in particular that I think show well what I'm getting at:

https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/4201
https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/4206
https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/4202

In that last one, the current version of the answer still hides too much information in my opinion. I link it specifically to contrast with what I think would be ideal.

I'd like to propose, though I know there's plenty of other stuff the site is worried about, that in addition to explanations the visible content of an answer be taken into consideration for quality judgement purposes. I'd suggest that this doesn't even require voting, and it is in fact a much easier thing to work on, since it just means active but judicious editing (which even people like me who aren't posing puzzles can help out with).

What do you say? Is this a good standard, and are edits of this nature positive for the site?

Answer 1

Posts that consist solely in a spoiler block are a fairly new phenomenon: there were only two during the first 5 months of the site, and 175 in the 6th month. That's in addition to a great many posts where the only visible text is “my answer is” or similar filler.

Such answers are useless. The fundamental question of a spoiler block is, do I want to expose it? In order to decide, I need to know what I'm going to find behind the curtain. If you give me no information, it's pretty rude to make me gratuitously go through additional effort to read your post. If I don't want to read any of the answers, I'll simply not read down past the question. If I do want to browse the answer section, there must be some visible mark that distinguishes answer 1

It's a bird!

from answer 2

It's a plane!

Writing as someone who participated early on, didn't really feel deeply involved because I was bored by those interchangeable “brainteaser lateral thinking riddles”, and all of a sudden found that that content had increased more than tenfold… yes, I agree that it's completely ridiculous. Your example is really the minimum that should be given visibly.

These all-spoiler answers are a symptom of the site's biggest problem, which is the all-answers-are-acceptable brainteaser puzzles. (That's a subset of challenge questions: math challenges, for examples, tend to elicit posts with long explanations of which only a small fraction if any is in a spoiler block — perhaps the solution as a spoiler and the detailed proof visible below.) These puzzles have no lasting value: it's all about getting the more juicy answers in, and then you can delete the thread and start again. These threads belong on a forum with expiring posts, not here.

I've taken to leaving the following comment (which I may amend to link to this thread instead) on answers with no useful visible content:

Please do not post an answer where all the content is hidden in spoiler markup. Your answer should make sense and be distinguishable from another answer to a reader who cannot or chooses not to read the spoiler block.

[Please do not post an answer where all the content is hidden in spoiler markup](https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1359/should-and-or-are-top-voted-answers-allowed-to-use-spoiler-tags/1424#1424). Your answer should make sense and be distinguishable from another answer to a reader who cannot or chooses not to read the spoiler block.

Together with a downvote (which I of course revert if the answer is edited and I find out about it), I've had limited success so far: a couple of posters edited their answer and let me know by replying to a comment, most ignored me (and a few went and downvoted my posts for no apparent reasons, not that I didn't expect such dishonesty).

I would like to officialize the sensible policy — in the words of badp

Your answer must make sense without spoiler protected paragraphs. If the spoiler is the whole point of your answer, don't spoiler protect it.

Answer 2

I like spoiler blocks. I have a large monitor, I enjoy solving most puzzles instead of simply looking at the answers, and spoiler blocks greatly facilitate my use of the site. I can read through questions without constantly having to avert my eyes from answers (often in boldface) only inches away.

Single spoiler blocks or multiple structured blocks with intermediary text (provided the text doesn't inadvertently give away the answer) are both fine.

Moreover, I don't understand the characterizations of hidden answers as "useless". Move your mouse three quarters of an inch. Answer appears. Click and it locks to visible. On a mobile device, tap on the block. Answer appears and locks to visible. How these trivial inconveniences render an answer "useless" is beyond me. Even scrolling up and down on the page requires more effort. Trying to prevent your mind from processing that The Butler Did It! barely outside your central field of vision while reading three paragraphs of text requires significantly more effort. Honestly, how many people here can claim that they didn't read "the butler did it" above before even getting through the second paragraph?

Typing in spoiler blocks and getting appropriate formatting is a whole different challenge due to SE's bizzare formatting markup, but a single >! suffices for most answers, and posters will typically break up answers into multiple spoilers in the more complex cases.

I'm putting this answer here so that anybody who similarly likes spoiler blocks can upvote it to show their support for the feature.

Answer 3

I think that answers should break their spoiler into multiple labelled parts if possible, like my answers here and here. That way, readers can control what they're spoiled on. Someone who just wants a nudge to help them along can look at just an early part and then work the rest out for themselves.

I object to the format given by the OP (Josh Caswell) because the fragments of sentences given outside spoilers are themselves mild spoilers. Someone reading an early spoiler can get inadvertently spoiled seeing a fragment for a later part in cleartext.

(This is all contingent on the community supporting using spoilers in generals. If not, that's fine too, and this answer is moot.)

Answer 4

$\color{black}{\textsf{I hope I’m not}}$ letting the cat out of the bag, $\color{black}{\textsf{but you actually can}}$ display some $\color{black}{\textsf{inline}}$ text in a spoiler block $\color{black}{\textsf{while hiding the rest of it.}}$.

$\color{black}{\textsf{I hope I’m not}}$ letting the cat out of the bag,
$\color{black}{\textsf{but you actually can}}$
display some $\color{black}{\textsf{inline}}$ text
in a spoiler block $\color{black}{\textsf{while hiding the rest of it.}}$.

It works on any site that supports MathJax.  \text{this} gives you $\text{this}$; \textsf{this} gives you $\textsf{this}$ — sans-serif font that, IMHO, clashes less with the normal, non-Math text.

Or, with a bit more work, you can get all the text to look the same:

$\color{black}{\textsf{I hope I’m not}}$ $\textsf{letting the cat out of the bag,}$ $\color{black}{\textsf{but you actually can}}$ $\textsf{display some}$ $\color{black}{\textsf{inline}}$ $\textsf{text in a spoiler block}$ $\color{black}{\textsf{while hiding the rest of it.}}$.

$\color{black}{\textsf{I hope I’m not}}$
$\textsf{letting the cat out of the bag,}$
$\color{black}{\textsf{but you actually can}}$
$\textsf{display some}$ $\color{black}{\textsf{inline}}$
$\textsf{text in a spoiler block}$
$\color{black}{\textsf{while hiding the rest of it.}}$.