@Raj it could be seen as quite opinion based as "is it best to do X" is dependent a lot on your situation and specifics that we cannot know. I'd probably separate the questions more into "which would be faster at read/write" and "what are the likely problems of each approach" which would make your question more specific. Asking for vague lists of things that might be good or bad is too open ended.

yup. (I'm currently using a single drive nas, a usb 3.0 HDD and a local hard drive on one system for backups. All 3 have their advantages)

Hello, people :-) .

I have a question about a bold and italics removal on a question I made.

This the question:

In the beginning, I added some bold and italics in order to emphasize and make text more readable...

but an edit (#3) removed them saying: "de-emphasized for readability and utility".

For me it is easiest to not put bolds, italics... etc. I take the effort of adding them in order to help readers understanding my texts..

So: is only this case an example of bad usage of bolds/italics? And why, if yes?

Or it is simple that bolds and italics should never be used? (They are aformat tag, so it would make no sense for me)

@Mokubai did that edit. so I'll leave that to him. I would say tho, that's definately off topic for SF

Well, if here this question is Off-Topic, where could I ask it?

Er... and what is "SF"?

serverfault

Well. I have no idea. There's a few radio concepts involved (Bigger antennae don't necessarily mean higher broadcast strengths, and wavelength matter), there's biology.

I'm skeptical of the whole "Wireless is harmful" meme so maybe skeptics. Maybe physics.

That's the problem with questions like these. They quite literally are too broad

@JourneymanGeek, thanks you for the advice. But my question on this chat was only about "bolds and italics removal" on the edit, not about the forum to migrate the question.

I will pose it in another way: I don't find a reason to remove them. If bolds and italics in cases like this are going to be removed in a so arbitrary way, without a reason, I will beter never add them to my question/answers. It will be faster.

@SopalajodeArrierez the main reason I removed the bold points was because as they stood they were emphasising points which were either largely unnecessary in the context of the question, or were implying an authority of knowledge that didn't exist.

In either case I felt that it made the question flow better and feel less like you were trying to state conjecture as fact.

Like @JourneymanGeek I am sceptical of the "Wi-Fi is killing us" argument but I do welcome any discussion on the matter, though I do also mostly agree that this is probably not the right place for it as it is more of a biology and physics question than a question about computer hardware.

@SopalajodeArrierez If you feel my edits were actively harmful then I do not have a problem with you re-inserting them, I was simply trying to help by making your question a bit more palatable to the community.

@Mokubai, your point of view really confuses me. Even when the conjectures on my question were not proved, right now, without bolds, the text is harder to read. Before, with boldings, the question could nearly be read just by jumping between boldings.

I think so are the jumping intended to.

Anyway, if your edit has been aproved by more users, I must accept that this is the way to use bolds and italics here, this is: not to use them.

@Mokubai, of course that I agree about duscussion is a good idea, even when disagreeing about the facts. And I even keep not knowing what StackExchange's forum should this question be migrated to...

but the point entering here is just about how easily the bold/italics removal has been acepted:

For skim readers who don't bother to absorb the actual meaning of what they are reading, maybe. But as someone who actually reads it it forces you towards accepting points as gospel and jump to the next one without questioning it.

The more clear conclusion for me is that, in future posts, not using them is the best method: faster, and (as you and other seem to think, even when I don't absolutely undestand it) easier to understand.

@Mokubai, I can not believe that most readers are forced to accept that bolded/italic text is true.

But, as I said, as long as your edit has been approved, I must accept that most people in this forum thinks like this. :-(

I always thought bolds/italics where "signaling" to the point, the spotlight of an argument, not transforming it in the truth.

As to why the edit was accepted, the fault is mine and twofold. Firstly I have above 3k rep so edits are immediately accepted, and I am a moderator. I do sometimes wish that I could still push things into the suggested edit queue.... I thought I was helping, but if you believe it was not then it is really up to you how you believe your question should be asked.

But, well, @Mokubai, your point of view must be considered for me as the widespread (the accepted) here by the users, or your edit would not have been accepted.

Points should be made in bullets, but I would reserve emphasis for when it is really necessary.

LOL. A not very scientific attitude for the users of this forum to accept things just because a highly reputated user says them.

Emphasis in text should be seen as raising your voice, italics (to me) state "this is quite important" while bold is akin to stating something either in a shout or a very stern "this is a major important point" voice

Ah, all right, @Mokubai. Maybe we could consider that is too my fault, as long as I live in Spain: the infludence here of a disastrous Educative System makes everybody to detest reading, so people don't have much patience for long paragraphs, and markups like bolds or italics make them more comfortable (less of a pain). If you read newspapers here, it is the commom method.

It would a great help for me to understand the proper bolds and italics on StackExchange if you could set them now on my question (I have added some docs references a few minutes ago, but you can ignore them).

I did always thought markups were mostly a subjective matter, like some sort of melody played with the text (so not very strictly considered), but if they are so important to be completely removed from my question, I wanna learn the correct usage on this forum, @Mokubai .

Markups like bolds, italics, tabulators, bullets... etc, seemed to me in writing like an art :-) .

This is: when I will be writing in spanish I will keep this "art" as I wish, like something personal...

Thats a good example of a cultural difference, in the UK I've almost never seen that kind of bold used in normal written text, either in newspapers or textbooks except when use to mandate things such as "you shall not do this *except when X applies"

but in a forum or common conversation like StackExchange, I will try to adapt.

Thanks you, @Mokubai.