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General Discussion

Dane Parchment
MOD
Dane Parchment
Treehouse Moderator 11,077 Points

Add a spoiler tag to the teamtreehouse comments?

As a moderator on these forums I am constantly helping new users or people who ask questions that I can answer. However, there is one thing that I have struggled with when providing those answers: Do I just give them the answer or do I walk them through solving it themselves and only help if they can't figure it out?

I have found in my programming experience, that just providing the answer isn't the most helpful way to...well...help somebody. I find that pushing them towards a possible solution that they can solve tends to help a lot more.

However, based on the way that TeamTreehouse comments work, it makes it harder to provide answers, without showing the solution itself, as I would have to coax them in the right direction, wait for a response, and go from there. To me that seems inefficient and time consuming for both parties.

So I am proposing that a spoiler tag should be added to comments, so that we can hide solutions from being automatically visible. In that regard, I can try and steer the student in the right direction without directly telling them how, but at the same time provide a solution for students who still couldn't solve the problem on their own.

This might sound like a redundant problem, but it would make my life and possibly others a bit easier... ;)

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,110 Points

We used to have that ability here, but changes in the forum code stopped it from working. We could have hidden sections that would be revealed when a "press to reveal spoiler" link was clicked.

I really miss it and would also love to see it implemented again, perhaps as a special custom markdown sequence.

Dane Parchment
Dane Parchment
Treehouse Moderator 11,077 Points

Yeah, that is exactly what I wanted, I would also miss it too. Hope they bring that functionality back!

1 Answer

Rob Allessi
Rob Allessi
8,600 Points

It was initially a bug in forum filtering that allowed the addition of some Javascript. That has long since been patched but the idea of adding a spoiler tag/button is something that has resurfaced in conversation, as were a myriad of other additions that I and others are championing to have implemented in the hopefully near future.

Dane Parchment
Dane Parchment
Treehouse Moderator 11,077 Points

Yay, that would be awesome.

On a side note, it is understandable that javascript would be filtered out of comments, so I understand why certain features don't exist currently.