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The beautiful bounty tool allows me to specify up to 3,000 characters in my optional custom message at the end, so I laid out a beautifully formatted message with line-breaks... the full works. It would have looked something like this;

With the suggested edit queue being (almost) constantly full on Stack Overflow, this request should be revisited.

A user with multiple edits in the queue screams bulk-updating of posts; Rewording of simple words, Generally screwing posts up or gung-ho retags. You often find the spontaneous spelling or grammar improvements add more value to a post than the mass edits shown above.

By restricting people to only have X edits in the queue at any one time we:

  1. Stop one person consuming the limited resource (the suggested edit queue)

  2. Stop wasting everyones time if the mass edit was wrong. The user has wasted his time making ~20, ~30 useless improvements, reviewers waste time rejecting them all and the suggested edit queue was full in the meantime.

However, upon pressing submit it actually looked like this;

With the suggested edit queue being (almost) constantly full on Stack Overflow, this request should be revisited. A user with multiple edits in the queue screams bulk-updating of posts; Rewording of simple words, Generally screwing posts up or gung-ho retags. You often find the spontaneous spelling or grammar improvements add more value to a post than the mass edits shown above. By restricting people to only have X edits in the queue at any one time we: 1. Stop one person consuming the limited resource (the suggested edit queue) 2. Stop wasting everyones time if the mass edit was wrong. The user has wasted his time making ~20, ~30 useless improvements, reviewers waste time rejecting them all and the suggested edit queue was full in the meantime.

Great 'eh?

Any chance we can:

  1. Allow line breaks. 3,000 characters but no line breaks are allowed? Are you kidding me? My bounty was 755 characters. 3000 characters without line breaks looks like this:

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc tincidunt lacus sit amet orci elementum porttitor. Integer arcu sapien, lobortis eu luctus a, feugiat at mauris. Integer lobortis neque quis leo condimentum ac laoreet turpis dictum. Nam imperdiet aliquet est, nec dignissim turpis pulvinar ut. Quisque viverra dui at diam sollicitudin tempor. Nullam vulputate, magna eu luctus scelerisque, lacus turpis lacinia libero, eget rhoncus orci neque id magna. Maecenas pharetra enim quis nisl suscipit pretium. Phasellus et interdum ante. Aenean feugiat ligula sed enim fringilla et commodo nisl faucibus. Sed faucibus, turpis vel porttitor sagittis, erat mauris vulputate eros, id posuere nibh urna quis mi. Nulla porttitor, metus quis lacinia interdum, orci nisl gravida nisi, id condimentum justo lacus a nulla. Quisque feugiat ligula quis velit lobortis in sollicitudin lacus suscipit. In vitae suscipit odio. Cras nec odio non mi mollis dictum. Aliquam pulvinar magna nec urna tincidunt mollis. In quis mauris metus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec consequat molestie elit vitae mattis. Cras tellus justo, interdum vitae tincidunt faucibus, lobortis sit amet nisi. Nullam et ultrices diam. Vestibulum a augue metus. Proin leo ante, rutrum egestas consectetur id, feugiat et erat. Nulla at neque ac nibh accumsan feugiat. Duis venenatis, erat sit amet rhoncus pharetra, tortor tellus scelerisque dolor, in suscipit lacus mi nec tortor. Suspendisse volutpat congue ante et varius. In quis iaculis tortor. Vestibulum eget nisl vitae ligula euismod hendrerit. Duis auctor elit et est ullamcorper vitae sodales risus hendrerit. Proin non auctor massa. Quisque sed orci vel dui ultricies viverra. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Mauris eget nulla et mi elementum dictum. Suspendisse pretium mauris vel orci pharetra id molestie purus venenatis. Integer eros dui, cursus at euismod et, aliquam quis felis. Pellentesque egestas turpis a nibh lobortis ac feugiat lectus aliquam. Maecenas luctus dictum fringilla. Pellentesque volutpat nisl et velit pulvinar porta. Maecenas aliquam arcu ac nulla lobortis viverra. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec non felis ut dolor ultricies rutrum. Proin euismod massa et tortor facilisis non varius odio egestas. Curabitur dolor nunc, iaculis vitae euismod nec, placerat vitae odio. Integer placerat justo in tortor porttitor sollicitudin mollis nisi tincidunt. Maecenas tempus massa nec diam ullamcorper bibendum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nam vehicula aliquam lacus, at consectetur neque fermentum sit amet. Ut ornare faucibus sem, at ornare tellus pellentesque eget. Suspendisse potenti. Aenean pharetra venenatis volutpat. Proin vestibulum tincidunt tellus, quis porta leo laoreet a. Phasellus sit amet purus in nisl egestas pretium vitae quis volutpat.

  2. Let the message box resize. Either manually via a Y-direction-drag-handle or automatically? Having 4 rows to type a 3,000 char message is not fun:

    enter image description here

  3. Add a preview, or an edit... or something? 3,000 chars is a lot. There is a lot of room for a typo or formatting error to slip in.

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2 Answers 2

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Note: Originally I posted this as a seperate question. Comments there suggested I should re-post it here as an answer.

I don't want to ask the SE team to spend a lot of time to generally "give some love" to the bounty tool (i.e. no need to invest a lot of time overhauling things), but I do think the following may be a quick (?) way to pluck some low-hanging fruit.

I suggest, given that you can't edit bounty text after it's started, it would be helpful:

  1. If there would be a preview of your bounty text, before posting it; and/or
  2. If there would be a link to view the available markdown that's allowed, much like the help for comments.

The allowed markdown can be summarized in a mere paragraph, and may prevent others from being caught off-guard like me about line breaks not being rendered in bounty text.

If neither of those is possible, these related tweaks may be minor enough to do and would help quite a bit:

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Uh... Wow.

Post an answer if you have that much to say. On meta at least, that's a perfectly appropriate use for answers. And answers won't go away after a week.

Since the bounty message is rendered using the same formatting as comments, showing a link to the same documentation would probably be appropriate there, and avoid some confusion.

Also... 3K chars may be a bit too generous there.

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  • 3
    In general I think editing it into the bottom of the question is better (and also won't go away after a week). That's what I used to do for bounty messages before we had this new interface.
    – Rup
    Commented May 30, 2012 at 12:40
  • @Rup: That's a good idea... I'll do that in future.
    – Matt
    Commented May 30, 2012 at 13:32
  • @Shog: Agreed with 3k been too much and the need to give more formatting help on the Bounty tool.
    – Matt
    Commented May 30, 2012 at 13:34
  • The difference between a comment and a bounty message is that I can edit my comment for 5 minutes if I messed up the markdown or spot a typo. If that happens with a bounty message, I'm screwed. I can agree that 3k characters are probably more than necessary, and maybe also that the stripped down comment markdown is sufficient, but I think the request for a rendered preview still has merit, unless we get a way to edit the bounty message.
    – Martin Ender
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 17:58

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