The Spoiler Tag

A few weeks ago, I made suggestions to Agent Proto and crono_logical about changing the spoiler tag so that you could put a custom message before the spoiler. Thus, "[spoiler=(BLAH)]blarg[/spoiler]" would give you "(BLAH) blarg", and "[spoiler=(OFFENSIVE)]blarg[/spoiler]" would give you "(OFFENSIVE) blarg",


Both of them thought this was a great idea, and crono posted it to the staff forum.

I don't believe it has been changed, even now, and I want to see it happen. If someone wants to post the source for the [spoiler], [bigspoiler] and [url] tags, I think I can change the spoiler tags myself so that they can use custom inserts. Then someone will just have to insert them into the server.

I want to get this changed. Who else is with me?

Peace
The Man

I agree it would work out better anyway. But maybe if they could get one of those buttons on the top of when you make a post that way the newbies know more of how to use the spoilers and will use it as it is already easy to use.

Can be done by having two [spoiler] tags defined in the custom vB codes section - one set to use the {option} setting, the other not to.



The one which uses the {option} can be set to replace [spoiler] with:

<B><I>{option} SPOILER: </I></B><FONT COLOR="#00243A">{param}</FONT>

to render

[spoiler=FF6]Kefka is evil[/spoiler]

as:

FF6 SPOILER: Kefka is evil





The one which doesn't use the {option} setting can be set to replace [spoiler] with:

<B><I>SPOILER: </I></B><FONT COLOR="#00243A">{param}</FONT>

to render

[spoiler]Yuna is female[/spoiler]

as:

SPOILER: Yuna is female

:D

Of course, you can tweak them as see fit, but the new colour used there should at least be changed in the current tag if you're not gonna mess about with them, it's less visible on both backgrounds :)

Blarg, crono_logical beat me to it. Well, ditto what he said.

I personally favour the idea of allowing people to add things in the spoiler tags that *don't* include "spoiler" (as per my above examples -- if we want to censor things that some people might not want to read, having "spoiler" after them might seem a bit silly), and it would be nice even to allow a blank tag to make things less cluttered. Thus:

The one which uses the {option} can be set to replace [spoiler] with:

<B><I>{option}: </I></B><FONT COLOR="#00243A">{param}</FONT>

so that [spoiler=ARROGANCE]I am the best person in the world[/spoiler] would yield ARROGANCE: I am the best person in the world. Then, there should be perhaps a "blankspoiler" tag (or something of the extent), so that [blankspoiler]blarg[/blankspoiler] would yield merely blarg. Then the old "bigspoiler" box should receive a similar modification, only ", highlight to view:" would be default at the end of the box title in the custom tag.

I think a custom spoiler tag would be a *great* thing. And I think eliminating the parentheses and replacing them with a colon is by far the best option, though I was merely going to add a space after the parentheses when I rewrote the tag. Oh well.

Go crono! :p

Edit: Pfft, I forgot to mention that apparently, Sephiroth1999AD mentioned a similar idea a *long* time back in chat. So long that I didn't remember it. I figure that since I forgot about it, we both came up with the idea independently of each other. But anyway, a lot of people seem to like the idea.

Peace
The Man

That is a highly erotic idea, Manly.

If that's erotic, I wonder what Shlup thinks of ... other stuff. *dies*

I think the idea's good. But I think you should treat spoiler tag like a quick button. Just like http://, @, IMG, #, PHP, List, Quote and other stuff. And when you click on it, it asks you for an optional thing that you want to use for spoiler marking. If you put nothing there, it will just show the default style, which is: (SPOILER) but if you put, for example, Blarg, in the optional box, it shows like this: (BLARG)

After going through the optional box, you'd then get to write the actual spoiler thing that would appear invisible in the text.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Sephiroth1999AD
I think the idea's good. But I think you should treat spoiler tag like a quick button. Just like http://, @, IMG, #, PHP, List, Quote and other stuff. And when you click on it, it asks you for an optional thing that you want to use for spoiler marking. If you put nothing there, it will just show the default style, which is: (SPOILER) but if you put, for example, Blarg, in the optional box, it shows like this: (BLARG)

After going through the optional box, you'd then get to write the actual spoiler thing that would appear invisible in the text.

---

I really like that interface suggestion, Sephiroth. I certainly think the tag needs to be more obvious, as then new users would think to use it more frequently, I think.

Quote:

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Originally posted by ShlupQuack
That is a highly erotic idea, Manly.

---

*speechless*

Peace
The Man

Quote:

---

Originally posted by The Man
I really like that interface suggestion, Sephiroth. I certainly think the tag needs to be more obvious, as then new users would think to use it more frequently, I think.

---

Agreed. Besides, most users, even those that have stayed in the forums for longer time, are unable to use the spoiler tags and don't have any idea how to do it.

I'm not sure why the spoiler tag is so unknown, it was in an announcement not so long ago - do people really not pay that much attention to announcements? :p

Apparently not.

No, it makes no sense to me either.

Peace
The Man

When I first came here it wasn't in the announcements, but yeah...

I think newbies are kinda supposed to ask in the Help forum, but the problem is, we're all too lazy. I ended up asking though.

That's a great idea, The Man and Sephiroth. I support it.

blargBleys has now altered the tags. Let's all thank him.

[bigspoiler=trout]Thank you, Bleys.[/bigspoiler]
:exdee:

warkEh, the results of my bigspoiler tag say "trout Spoiler, highlight to view" right now, which is kind of odd, and the blankspoiler tag still hasn't been implemented. [ blankspoiler] and [/blankspoiler] take about the same amount of text as &#91color=00243A] and [/color], but it's probably easier to remember "blankspoiler" than the number "00243A." Woteva. What we have now is still about ten times better than what we had, so Bleys deserves a serious round of applause. *applause*

[bigspoiler=CTRL+ALT+DEL SNIZZ]*just had to try out the new tags for kicks*

Eh, don't mind me. I'm kwazy.[/bigspoiler]
PeaceThe Man