Leave newlines intact in bounty messages

Question

Bounties allow us to provide a message along with bounties we place, should we deem it useful to include one. I use this myself regularly, and sometimes a decent explanation is warranted so that readers understand what's going on.

However, bounty messages get their newlines stripped out. This can impede our attempts to make our bounty messages readable and useful. Just now I wrote a bounty with 3 paragraphs + a footnote on its own line to maximise its legibility (and could type newlines in the bounty message text input), but after submission the message was compacted into the following:

It's especially strange that bounty messages can be a whole three thousand characters long (enough for a junior essay), while not providing us with paragraphs, a basic building block of legibility:

Not that I think I could ever use the whole 3,000 — the message above was just 850.

Could bounty descriptions please leave the newlines I write in them intact?

(Should someone decide to write super-tall bounty messages to abuse this ability, bear in mind moderators can refund bounties; a user making a nuisance is not beyond being acted on.)

Answer 1

The display of bounty notices with custom text has been updated to preserve double line breaks, and to highlight custom text in a more visible and consistent way. This is only applying to double-line breaks. You can read more about it (and see screenshots) in this answer.

Answer 2

Taking SevenSidedDie's comment into account, if the reason for not allowing line breaks is for "distinctness between the bounty's fixed information lines and the optional message", an alternative could be to only allow single line-breaks.

This allows users to separate their bounty descriptions into sections, while keeping the user description as a single text block.

For example

This question has an open bounty worth +50 reputation

This question has not received enough attention

This is a lengthy bounty description asking that the winning answer meets a specific set of requirements. The question could use some more conversation about things. \n
Adding a second paragraph could be done with a single-lined line break, which would keep the desired distinction between the "official" text, and the custom description. \n
This helps increase readability requested by OP, while ensuring that the current method of displaying bounty descriptions isn't altered drastically. \n
Bounty goes to the answer which best answers the question. \n
Bonus bounties for extra detail. \n

It isn't a perfect solution, but it would give users a bit more control over how their bounty is presented.

Answer 3

Regarding this Q-A session and this Q-A session also.

Just an example why this feature is so needed from the last 5 minutes:

Please look at the bounty message I published a few moments ago in its following multi-paragraph version and after that look at the product appearing is one long paragraph:

Paragraphed version

This question has a very messy story of migration and merging:

At the start, I published an original question in RC SE, then after it was closed there and me recommended to do so, I Published a new better question here, which is includes more accurate terminology, is more exampled and more carefully worded.

After asking my new question here, the old one from RC was migrated here without me desiring this so a "salad" of two similar questions was created.

In return I have cloned all question data of the new question into the new one and also asked the mods to migrate all content from the new question to the old question so we would have everything in one place. Well ; it was done.

I now give this bounty because some answers here relate to the old version of the question (migrated from RC) which didn't or at least shouldn't reflect my mind. I ask all answerers of answers to the old question to update their answers per the new question now appearing here after question update.

Non paragraphed version

The bounty expires in 7 days. Answers that other users post to this question are eligible for a +100 reputation bounty. JohnDoea is looking for a more detailed answer to this question: “This question has a very messy story of migration and merging: At the start, I published an original question in RC SE, then after it was closed there and me recommended to do so, I Published a new better question here, which is includes more accurate terminology, is more exampled and more carefully worded. After asking my new question here, the old one from RC was migrated here without me desiring this so a "salad" of two similar questions was created. In return I have cloned all question data of the new question into the new one and also asked the mods to migrate all content from the new question to the old question so we would have everything in one place. Well ; it was done. I now give this bounty because some answers here relate to the old version of the question (migrated from RC) which didn't or at least shouldn't reflect my mind. I ask all answerers of answers to the old question to update their answers per the new question now appearing here after question update.”

What's better? Please, you tell me in comments.

I find the community's management around this issue as a total mismanagement; I say this humbly with 7 years of experience in the community, offering many bounties myself and having a question about this that was marked as a duplicate of this one.

A non less disturbing problem --- the inability to edit bounty messages, at least within a given time frame.