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I wanted to add the following comment to this answer:

Yep -- everyone on meta should use a greasemonkey script to block the meme question from the front page so that the name changers can crap in everyone's sandbox have their fun. Heaven forbid that a moderator try to help the community as a whole.

Unfortunately, the comment mechanism doesn't support the strike element. Without it the comment suffers so, after several experiments, I deleted it. Some would undoubtedly claim that it's suffering enough as is and deleting it merely put it out of its misery, but I digress.

Clearly the use of strikethrough conveys meaning in a manner that is much more concise than the alternative. Given that comments are length limited, I think adding support for it would be useful.

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  • 2
    Can't you find some other way (lick sticking it in parentheses (what about whispering in italics? (or maybe even nesting parentheses (nesting FTW(!))))) to make an aside?
    – random
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 13:56
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    @random If you're licking your comments, you're doing it wrong.
    – random
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 13:59
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    Why not just say what you were going to say? Why beat around the bush?
    – random
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 14:06
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    Because the strike through actually draws more attention to it, thereby emphasizing it in a way that making it parenthetical or simply stating it doesn't.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 14:12
  • Having said that, you'd like to have some cake and eat it too?
    – random
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 14:15
  • No. Too stuffed from Thanksgiving. Thanks for offering, though.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 14:19
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    Or you could just be civil and not write comments like that. Might as well drop some F bombs. For shame.
    – snicker
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 19:15
  • Because the idea that I ought to have to use a particular browser, install a plugin, and use a script so that a group of adolescents can do whatever they want seemed to call both for that level of sarcasm and that particular imagery.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 22:17
  • This question is relevant to your interests: What's with all the rude comments recently?
    – snicker
    Commented Nov 29, 2009 at 5:06
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    Did you even read my comment or only the one mildly offensive word in it? Yes, it's sarcastic but I didn't personally attack anyone, imply anything about their parentage, or indicate that they're of sub-average intelligence. I merely used sarcasm to point out the absurdity of the answerer's position that if you want to avoid the kind of behavior that I likened to a cat using a child's sandbox for a litter box -- an apt metaphor used previously to describe it -- that you should be the one to jump through the hoops instead of the offenders being restrained from their behavior by a moderator.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Nov 29, 2009 at 15:52
  • The fact that you are having to defend it leads to the conclusion that the comment is questionable at best.
    – Zombo
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 20:23
  • @svnpenn I suppose I could have used the word defecate, but it lacked the punch I was going for. Or is it sarcasm in general that you object to?
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 20:54
  • The whole motivation for your question is not to help people, or to better the site, but for your personal need to be snarky/sarcastic to other people.
    – Zombo
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 21:13
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    Whether this questioner's motivation was to allow snarkiness, or not, does not reduce the fact that others would like to correct their comments with strikethrough so that the earlier form can be seen, especially as the earlier form would have been the version used for emails and notifications.
    – Mark Hurd
    Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 1:15
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    s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ elements are already supported!
    – John Militer
    Commented May 30, 2017 at 3:17

2 Answers 2

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We're not sure whether we want to add it to comments. Jeff's answer obviously isn't valid anymore (the triple-dash strike syntax is the only difference between the MarkdownMini versions for chat and for comments, so there's no real technical reason against this anymore).

But really the only valid reason for strikethrough in comments we can think of is for adding snark. In chat, that may be valid (if used moderately) as a way to convey things in text that are easier in spoken conversations, but I'm not sure this is a good idea in comments.

The purpose of this answer is really to re-open this discussion. Technically, it's now trivial to add strikethrough to comments. But for adding it, we'd need a case to be made that it's useful for more than, as Kyle put it, "obnoxious snarky poor humor".

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    ̶C̶o̶m̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶.̶.̶.̶
    – Lix
    Commented Jun 4, 2012 at 13:23
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    FWIW, I see two valid reasons: 1) for emphasis; snarky or not, strikethrough draws visual attention to the text and 2) for editing; using strikethrough allows you to modify your comment within the window and still retain context from the previous version.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Jun 5, 2012 at 14:28
  • I know this will count as 'too localized' as a reason for adding strike to comments, but just so you know there is at least one valid reason.... I was trying to add a commment to a question referencing chapter 5 of Steve Krug's 'Don't Make Me Think' and there was no easy way for me to type 'Omit <s>needless</s> words'.
    – Dhaust
    Commented Jul 17, 2012 at 6:48
  • @Lix please how did you do that? I tried a lot to add U+0336 but its not working or i don't know how, thanks in advance
    – Tarik
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 15:57
  • @tarik - I just used an online unicode s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ tool. From there just copied and pasted.
    – Lix
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 16:10
  • @Lix I think you are talking about adamvarga.com/strike, but why we can't do it without using such tools, I saw that they are talking about using Unicode but i don't know how
    – Tarik
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 16:13
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    @tarik That's exactly how they do it :-) copy and paste unicode generated off site - either that or attempt to manually enter unicode key combinations - which is not feasible
    – Lix
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 16:14
  • why its not feasable @Lix ?
    – Tarik
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 16:24
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    @tarik because you would need to press ~5 keys to get one character each time - it's possible but simply not realistic.
    – Lix
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 16:29
  • @Lix ok I understand what you said but not so much, as I can't imagine how to do it. Anyway, I already bothered you a lot, so thanks for your time :)
    – Tarik
    Commented Feb 17, 2015 at 16:32
  • I'd like to point out that since unicode makes the thing possible already, making it more standard/accessible coulnd't do much harm. (and I'm sure many legit use exist for it) If useless/stupid comments are really a problem, I'd rather consider options like allowing to downvote them.
    – Balmipour
    Commented Nov 14, 2018 at 10:56
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    But really the only valid reason for strikethrough in comments we can think of is for adding snark. It really annoys me whenever I hear people use this argument. A lack of imagination and foresight on the part of developers should not be an excuse for limiting users. ¬_¬ (Besides, you specifically called that usage valid, so in this case, it's not even a valid excuse. 🤦)
    – Synetech
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 19:08
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    @Synetech Well, had you read the rest of the answer, you would've seen that it's asking for people to give other reasons. In two-and-a-half years, there has been exactly one -- being able to quote Steve Krug 😁 Anyway, I don't work for Stack Exchange anymore, so I have no skin in the game. I still agree with my younger self, though.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 19:13
  • @balpha, I did read it. I wasn't singling out this specific instance, I was pointing out that it is an issue that I've seen many times (far too often), hence "whenever I hear people use this argument".
    – Synetech
    Commented Sep 7, 2019 at 20:17
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    "FWIW, I see two valid reasons: [...] 2) for editing; using strikethrough allows you to modify your comment within the window and still retain context from the previous version." That's precisely why I'm here today. Was that not useful enough 9 years ago?
    – Nolonar
    Commented May 20, 2021 at 18:57
-2

The main problem is that there's no markdown equivalent for <strike> or <s>.

At the moment we only support markdown in comments.

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    Egads man! Why are you not using <del> instead?
    – random
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 14:18
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    a very limited subset of markdown, really--just bold, italic, and code
    – Kip
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 14:48
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    Could ---this is strike through--- be a possible way of adding this to the local implementation of Markdown?
    – perbert
    Commented Feb 24, 2010 at 14:19
  • I also feel it would be good, maybe with something like -[we're on strike]
    – Camilo Martin
    Commented Nov 8, 2010 at 6:10
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    Possibly ~single tilde~ or even ~~double tildes~~
    – bb216b3acfd8f72cbc8f899d4d6963
    Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 1:04

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