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I realize that the tag wiki excerpt should be brief, and there shouldn't be too many formattings allowed, but I think simple code formatting should be included.

This is most valuable for tags that concern specific programming language syntactic constructs. In addition to a brief textual description, we can then also give an archetype code fragment that clearly and instantly communicates the construct by an example.

This would allow us to write things like:

  • [post-increment]: "blah blah blah... looks like i++ ..."
  • [ternary-operator]: "... aka ?: looks like expression ? trueValue : falseValue ..."
    • (ignore the [ternary-operator] vs [conditional-operator] issue for now)

Searching for syntactic constructs is hard enough already on stackoverlow, so I think providing how they typically look like in tag wiki excerpts is beneficial.

The "problem" is that right now back quoting doesn't render text like this in tag wiki excerpt (see example: [balancing-groups]. Not only is this a useful feature that is missing, it's also inconsistent with the rest of the site.

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There is now a specific box for the tag wiki excerpt. So don't put markdown in the excerpt.

No markdown in the excerpt is by design in order to keep confusing visual cues in an area of prime screen real estate at a minimum.

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    How about keeping it just as light as comments where I can still do this back quote formatting?
    – polygenelubricants
    Sep 7, 2010 at 2:42
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    @poly - I think the point is that comments are small and bellow posts... It doesn't much matter what they look like. The eye skips over them. ---------------- Tag excerpts are at the top of the screen in an area where you expect post summaries to be, so any sort of visual formatting on the excerpts will distract the eye from the focus of the page (the posts).
    – Peter Ajtai
    Sep 7, 2010 at 2:45
  • I'd argue that for syntax-related tags, back quoting stereotypical examples is beneficial and probably should draw some attention. Yes, it is abusable, but we're already reserving tag wiki editors to be the Top 20 for that tag. But point definitely taken, overly obnoxious formatting definitely isn't good.
    – polygenelubricants
    Sep 7, 2010 at 2:53

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