(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Comments are expression. Comment formatting aids expression. With poll. [1] ['View Profile', 'Gay Ca Democrat', 'Angmar Barrow', 'Nanny Ogg', 'Chitown Kev'] Date: 2026-04-23 I’ve been mulling over Kos’ assessment of plain text comments (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/22/800025511/announcements/dk6-day-8-im-back-how-are-we-feeling/): The more I use them, the more I appreciate the simplicity of not having HTML. I can actually read threads without sorting through formatting clutter, and that cleaner experience extends to images as well. There’s a reason most major social platforms limit both formatting and visuals in replies—it keeps conversations readable, consistent, and focused on communication rather than noise. I’m less concerned with “easy to read” than I am with “easy to understand the writer’s intent.” When we comment, we’re expressing our thoughts and feelings about the diary. If I’m outraged, I don’t want to be reduced to an ALL-CAPS SCREED when bold, italic, and underscore provide nuance to the emphasis. When I read a formatted content, I can practically hear voice intonations. When I read all caps, all I “hear” is yelling. YMMV. Paragraph formatting is almost as important as character formatting, especially headings and block quotes. Comments take many forms; here’s my perception of how they break down: Expressions of agreement or disagreement – character formatting communicates the different types of emphasis that a commenter might want to use. To me, italicized text means “Please pay attention to this,” while text that is bold and italicized means “ Pay attention to this, dammit! “ “ Context/perspective – “This fits in with the administration’s handling of x” – links are likely. IMO, the ability to insert quotes from the linked sources increases the likelihood that readers will get the point of the comment because a lot of people don’t click through to sources. Block quotes set cited text apart from the commenter’s, and actually increase readability rather than hamper it. Most of my comments are the second type. When I read a diary, I click through to the sources that interest me and find other sources if I want to learn more. If what I learn is interesting and/or important, I try to expand the diary’s impact by adding relevant content, often from multiple sources strung together into some form of narrative. ” But without block quote formatting, all my comment citations look like this, and it’s hard to distinguish the quoted text from my own writing. I’m finding commenting to be really frustrating, and because of that, I comment a lot less than I used to. “. I’m also struggling with the comment length restriction. I know of several workarounds but none of them preserves the continuity of my comment. And a separate diary is inappropriate because I’m responding to someone else’s diary and a new diary would lose the context of the original diary. So I often don’t comment at all. Markos wrote that plain text “keeps the conversation focused on communication rather than noise.” I disagree. When we express ourselves, our feelings and the ways that we express them aren’t noise, they’re the whole point of the community! Apologies for some errors; I couldn’t edit text in a previous element. Is this a known bug? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/4/23/800026378/community/c/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/