In my post, I use spoiler tags to hide verbose content and give an overview of the entire post when viewed.

This way, even when viewing the post directly, the verbocity is only viewable by explicit action. As opposed to readmore tags which are unconditionally expanded when the post is viewed directly.

It has been suggested to me that this use of spoiler tags is an abuse, and that it causes some kind of problem with something called a "table form" which I have never encountered. (Nor do I know how to enable it, nor have any interest in knowing!)

My position is that the intent of spoiler tags is to hide the enclosed content until the reader elects to view it--ie. The exact purpose for which I use them--and that there is no other mechanism(8) to achieve this.

(*Well, short of that occasionally resorted to by tye, that of enclosing the content in html comment tags and adding a note to that effect in the post, thus forcing the reader to view source and wade through the mess of html markup to view.)

And if this "table form" somehow fails to hide the content until the reader elects to view it, then it is the "table view" that is broken.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to spoiler tag "abuse" by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.