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I've started to implement this feature on the site I'm working on, and wanted to know if it's a good thing to do.

Basically, just like any other site where you can post your ads, you have a field to include the description of what you're selling. This is often just plain text. Would it be any better if there would be markup involved? I would think of things like ### Header ### and such, so the descriptions can be formatted better, if someone has the time to (and feels like) do(ing) it, but I wouldn't have to worry about urls being posted, or images embedded, etc.

I think it would be a nice little extra added to the site.

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I've found that giving users the freedom to format their own entries lets them create awfulness. And they'll take advantage of that freedom with great enthusiasm. You'll probably get descriptions that are set as bold, red, italic, and I can't even imagine what else.

If it were me, I'd break the description on the entry form into fields that each get their own style, specified by a designer: a Header field that you set in bold at 14 pt, a Body field that you set in regular 12 pt, a URL that's set in blue underlined.

This should make your page more uniform and visually simple than if you let users do whatever they want. They'll all try to be the most noticeable thing on the page.

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  • This is a neat idea, I'll probably go this way, thanks!
    – Alex Szabo
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 14:07
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I think it sounds like a good idea. There are many free text editors (such as the one here) that are configurable to match exactly what you want to allow.

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