tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Markdown-style links in comments?)

Scott Morrison comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3953)

Scott Morrison — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 10:27:22 -0700

I can't find a feature request over at meta.SE, so the right thing to do is create one there, and report the link here, and also in the sticky thread about feature requests.

Dror Speiser comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3950)

Dror Speiser — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:57:02 -0700

you're right! I got confused... well then - is it possible to do? do people agree? agreement from the maker of the code to change it exists?

Scott Morrison comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3938)

Scott Morrison — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:56:48 -0700

@dror -- it appears that this thread is precisely fpqc asking for an improvement to the interface.

Dror Speiser comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3937)

Dror Speiser — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:46:32 -0700

@fpqc: if you have strong feelings about how to improve the interface, open another discussion. Anything can be done, and if people agree, it should.

Scott Morrison comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3920)

Scott Morrison — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:23:07 -0700

@fpqc, don't worry, I'm not adopting the SO philosophy here -- I'd go much much further in limiting the usefulness of comments. :-) Fortunately I'm in the minority on this.

Harry Gindi comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3919)

Harry Gindi — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:53:27 -0700

Yes. That's exactly what I mean. The problem is that it really breaks up the flow of the text, and it's not even like you can say something like:

See the link below:

(Link)

Because comments don't respect line breaks.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3918)

Anton Geraschenko — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:20:00 -0700

Could you please clarify the original post and title? Right now, you can just type a URL and it becomes a link. Are you asking for comments to also support markdown-style linking, like [this](http://theurl.com/path)?

Harry Gindi comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3917)

Harry Gindi — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:16:08 -0700

The comment system right now is complete crap, and people still use it. I think that this whole idea of not having discussions is a good one, but mathematical answers usually require more discussion than answers about programming, for instance. I think that adopting the SO philosophy dogmatically is not very helpful at all for MO.

Scott Morrison comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3916)

Scott Morrison — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:13:04 -0700

btw -- for anyone who doesn't know this, to make a link in comments, just paste the link in. If it's a long link, it will automatically be displayed as truncated.

Scott Morrison comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3915)

Scott Morrison — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:07:06 -0700

Only very limited markdown exists in comments, mostly to discourage people using comments inappropriately, by making commenting more cumbersome and annoying! It seems a strange strategy, I agree, but I also happen to like it, personally. This has been discussed at enormous length over at meta.SO, see for example this question.

I'd love to see a major overhaul of the commenting system, but I don't really know what to replace it with yet. I've noticed recently (looking at the database dumps) that the comment/post ratio, as well as the comment/vote ratio, has been steadily climbing. I think this is not a good thing.

Dror Speiser comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3914)

Dror Speiser — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:09:32 -0700

Definitely.

Harry Gindi comments on "Markdown-style links in comments?" (3913)

Harry Gindi — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:02:32 -0700

Apparently, in the comments, you can't add markdown-style links of the form: [link](http://link.asdf). This seems like it would be useful. What do you guys think about it?