Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Hidden text

Inappropriate uses
There are a couple of points that should be added to the section Inappropriate uses:
 * Commenting out content previously part of the article, but deemed unsuitable. These should be removed, not hidden.
 * Adding content unsuitable for an article into the hidden wikicode of an article.

The first point is somewhat analogous to WP:DONTHIDE for scrolling lists and collapsible content. A real world example is here, where keeping the content there, but hidden, is not the right solution; that content should have been removed. The second point is weaker, as one could argue that it's covered under other policies or guidelines. However, someone might claim "they didn't really add it to the article", and as this is a gray area, if we want to state somewhere that content inappropriate for an article is still inappropriate if hidden, this is probably the right place to do it. As an obvious example, we couldn't include pasted copyrighted material into a hidden section. Mathglot (talk) 20:04, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should not host content as hidden text that doesn't belong in an article, but maybe we should go further in discouraging its use. Is there any evidence that those editors who might add something they shouldn't to an article even read hidden text? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:36, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Phil, thanks for your comment. I wasn't quite sure about your question in the second sentence: are you asking whether such editors read the hidden text guideline, "WP:Hidden text", or whether they read hidden text added by other editors in articles? If the former, I have no idea; but the reason I added this section, is that I was adding this piece of advice at a User talk page about such a situation, and I wanted to link to a guideline page that supported my comments. I dislike adding such statements at a UTP without a guideline link for them to follow, because it seems preachy or IJDLI. I assumed I'd find support at WP:HIDDEN for it, but was very surprised to find that there is no such support at the guideline. This seems like a gap that needs to be filled. Or else I'm mistaken, and it's fine for editors to add hidden content to articles, but I can't imagine that's really the intention. Mathglot (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Just clarifying for the record: the example of hidden text in the article that I referred to above did happen, but in an oversight on my part, I notified the wrong user. User:Pabsoluterince is an innocent victim of my having misread who originally placed the Html comment delimiters; it was not them, and I've redacted my comment at their UTP to clarify and apologize. The issue is real, but was introduced by a different editor in this case. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * How common of an occurrence is this? If it's only come across once in a blue moon, it doesn't need to be codified in the guideline...if it is done with relatively high frequency, then go for it.. (But the second point I would not add, as that seems to me common sense...unless that is also being done relatively often). 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:9500:B796:F20:CB93 (talk) 21:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know, but perhaps a clever advanced search might provide the answer. How often does anyone use it for "Advertising WikiProjects" for example, or for adding "This article is perfect" and shouldn't be changed? Those case are covered currently. But my comment was based on actual usage; see my response to Phil above. Mathglot (talk) 22:18, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * While I can not speak to how often the above-mentioned misuse occurs, I do think the point codified in § Appropriate uses for hidden text, where it says: "Hiding a portion of the text that has been temporarily removed while consensus is pending.", begs for clarification, either directly or indirectly by removing the full stop and further stating: unless prohibited as an inappropriate use in the section below., with the added points listed. Without some form of clarification, it seems reasonable to anticipate confusion and even, perhaps, misuse as mentioned.--John Cline (talk) 22:45, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I would argue for something like this: Hiding a contentious portion of text while consensus-building is taking place. However, it may be preferable to transfer such text onto a subpage of the article's talk page. This would require the editor to begin a discussion on the talk page while adding hidden comments for this purpose. That way the hidden text can be resolved relatively quickly with no real difference to deletion and then discussion. Pabsoluterince (talk) 01:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * This is a good proposal. One might question whether it is at all appropriate to temporarily hide contentious text within the article. The revision history can help to easily restore the text if need be. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 12:07, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I would argue against use of the word contentious. This word is used at Wikipedia to call out text that may be value laden; see for example, . I question whether it is appropriate to hide text whether it is contentious or not: if it doesn't improve the article, it should be removed, contentious or not. As already mentioned by IP 71, the revision history captures the content. I see only the disadvantages of keeping the text hidden. If there are advantages, what are they? Under what editing policy is hiding content an improvement to the article? Mathglot (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The only advantage that I can conceive is that the text could still be modified and improved, individually, and/or collaboratively, while hidden whereas it remains static in the articles history. I suppose it's possible that content determined to be unsuitable for one article, may be considered "taylor made" for another.--John Cline (talk) 03:16, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The point is, it remains static in the article's history forever, regardless whether it is removed from the article, or hidden. Removed is better. But you're quite right that content unsuitable for one article may be perfectly appropriate for another, and you can just move it over if it would be useful somewhere else. If hidden, few people will ever notice it. Hidden article text is just clutter, and serves no purpose. Mathglot (talk) 06:08, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hiding it in source code is much more visible than it would be if it is removed IMO. I think mainly, there's no reason to forbid an editing style if it's not causing harm. It is an improvement to the page because it supports the editor that uses this technique while improving the encyclopedia. I have absolutely no idea how common this approach is, but I think something like this would work:Hiding a disputed portion of text while consensus-building is taking place, if previously established through local consensus. Transfering such text onto a subpage of the article's talk page will achieve the same effect. This is bascially the same, but would only be allowable if the people on the page agree to using this approach beforehand. Pabsoluterince (talk) 10:33, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * If is a semantic label, maybe "disputed" should be established as the preferred term. A potential problem with hiding-in-place (after consensus to do so) would be a possible proliferation of hidden-text "islands" throughout, especially in highly contested articles. A sandbox-like solution as suggested by Pabsoluterince would be better, but more complicated. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 12:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't think it would get that bad, as if implemented, each hidden portion would need to be actively discussed on the talk page. If sections became continually hidden, it would be the same as a section being continually deleted and just as easily dealt with. Pabsoluterince (talk) 10:33, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
 * While I'm not necessarily opposed to 's wording above, I can't count the number of times I've seen unattributed hidden comments (usually giving unsolicited advice, but sometimes unsourced opinions on content) that are still there ten years later, long after anyone knows what it's doing there. I also sense a kind of reluctance on the part of other editors to remove a hidden comment, unless they "have a good reason"; I imagine them thinking, "Isn't it just safer to leave it there? Someone else will get rid of it," and so, it stays around forever. Because of this, I *do* remove hidden comments that don't appear to have Talk page consensus, but that involves checking Talk page archives, and sometimes I do a history search to try to find who added it, and why, and they find who did it, but not why, and are rarely illuminating. No wonder others don't want to remove them; it's too much work. Why should it be the responsibility of other editors to remove such content? So, I'm concerned about it just proliferating like kudzu, with nobody removing it. If there were some way of putting a time limit on it, perhaps by requesting a sig so that other editors will feel more confident above removing the kudzu, then I'd be more okay with Pabsoluterince's suggested improvement. Mathglot (talk) 20:47, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Could a structured hidden-text approach work? Directing editors to use a template similar to Anchor comment, but with added parameters including of course, text for free-form text. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 17:01, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a pretty good idea, partly because the template could be designed to require a timestamp and user sig parameter to be filled in, or could even just add them automatically, and secondly because a tracking category could be added so that an interested user (or a bot) could follow the category that would contain all pages with such hidden-comment templates. That said, a template would just be a tool. The discussion should focus on what (if anything) we want the guideline to say. Once that is settled, if a tool would help implement it, so much the better, and it could be added afterward. But first things first. Mathglot (talk) 18:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a pretty good idea, partly because the template could be designed to require a timestamp and user sig parameter to be filled in, or could even just add them automatically, and secondly because a tracking category could be added so that an interested user (or a bot) could follow the category that would contain all pages with such hidden-comment templates. That said, a template would just be a tool. The discussion should focus on what (if anything) we want the guideline to say. Once that is settled, if a tool would help implement it, so much the better, and it could be added afterward. But first things first. Mathglot (talk) 18:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

This doesn't seem like a good modification to the guideline. I often see large amounts of uncited text commented out in the source of articles, including during a large maintenance run I did a couple months ago to fix thousands of broken cn templates -- there is quite a lot of it, and it's arguable that it should be exposed and tagged with a cn, but it doesn't seem like something that is always inappropriate. I have added some of these myself, when I was writing an article and found something that only weak sourcing existed for (but better sourcing obviously existed somewhere) or something which I couldn't be bothered to incorporate fully. I guess the main question is what harm it causes. Nobody sees it unless they are editing an article, in which case they already have some interest in the subject, and are in the process of working on improving its coverage. Sure, if the article was 2kb of text and 8kb of comments, it'd be a problem, but I've never seen such a thing, and I don't see it proliferating like kudzu. Sure, we "should" put that sort of crap on the talk page -- but in practice, talk page sections will often languish unread, or become archived. I've expanded articles many times, but cannot recall a single instance in which I surveyed the entirety of multiple talk page archives on the off-chance that one of the sections contained a bunch of usable information in need of a source.

As for content under dispute, I think commenting it out while the talk page discussion/RfC/whatever runs is a reasonable approach, and I'll explain why. While the inclusion of a passage (section, paragraph, sentence, or sentence fragment) is being disputed, it's definitionally unclear whether it's going to be included or not: this means it is a huge pain to edit other parts of the article. Say, for example, that a talk page discussion is running on whether to include a "Controversy" section in a company's article -- but one of the controversies (the CEO turning out to have been D. B. Cooper) caused the company to go out of business. If the section were simply removed, a normal editor might see this glaring omission and write it into the end of the "History" section, duplicated refs and all, performing a bunch of work that had already been done, and throwing more drama into the talk page discussion. Moreover -- and this may be a somewhat cynical take, but I think it's true and warrants mentioning -- edit wars over the inclusion of a sentence or paragraph often futz up the formatting of the page because people are grabbing stuff out of previous revisions, which is extremely tedious to fix, and the situation is greatly improved if people are adding/removing a  rather than a thousand bytes of text. jp×g 17:38, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Using hidden text to hide poor quality sources
If article body contains contents based on reliable as well as unreliable sources, is the use of hidden comment to put inappropriate sources out of the view? I am seeing this being done in some articles. This seems like the use of article space as a sandbox Graywalls (talk) 00:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Visual editor method?
Is there any way to add hidden text using the visual editor? Zanahary (talk) 22:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)