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The yellow block quote that "> " produces is extremely useful, but wouldn't it be better if different colors were accessible?

One application of this could be in a case where one wants to compare two ideas, block quoting one in yellow and the other in red.

I understand that we would like to keep the aesthetic feel of this site, but it couldn't be that hard to come up with a few additional colors to use without causing an eyesore.

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    $\begingroup$ While I'm sure someone like you would have good intentions for using such a feature, we would probably see a lot of questions come in with a red body and "HALP" written in big yellow letters. $\endgroup$
    – jonsca
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 2:16
  • $\begingroup$ That is definitely a good point. Maybe require a certain reputation to access the colors? You could even unlock each color at different rep levels, intentionally making red the hardest to obtain. $\endgroup$
    – Nerdatope
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 2:53
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    $\begingroup$ Well, that starts to get complicated I think. All of the Beta sites use the same codebase, so any modifications like that would appear over quite a few sites in the network. There would have to be overwhelming support for it, and as this MSE post indicates, it likely wouldn't be well-received. $\endgroup$
    – jonsca
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 4:10
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    $\begingroup$ As @jonsca subtly points out, there are lots of features that aren't used in StackExchange because of misinterpretations/abuses. When a well-intended feature is misused, the active users of the site are the ones that get bothered the most, and that's causing lots of problems.... Furthermore, blockquotes are 95% of the time used for citing info, and thus the benefit of having colorful questions doesn't outweigh the occasional horrible posts it will cause. Way lesser new users are aware of doing such things with MathJax, and the problematic posters are usually too rash to use such feature. $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 11:38
  • $\begingroup$ I see now, one question though. Now that I see that it wouldn't be the best idea, should I be worried about people voting down this post? I've seen other feature request posts get destroyed by the community with vote down counts as low as -16. What should I do? $\endgroup$
    – Nerdatope
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 16:24
  • $\begingroup$ Questions are usually downvoted for being poor in quality. I don't see this being a poor meta question, so downvoting is unlikely. Although, we all take risks with every post we make. $\endgroup$
    – John Snow
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 4:32
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    $\begingroup$ @Nerdatope Usually downvotes in big sites' metas or meta.SE indicate disagreement with the feature-request. (And lest you haven't noticed, there are no rep gains or losses in meta.) HOWEVER, chemists are too nice to downvote.... :P $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 5:32
  • $\begingroup$ I generally do not like this idea at all. I come by RIDICULOUS markup all the time. Everything that distracts from the contents of the posts makes it hard to understand. The blockquote environment should be used for direct quotes only, using it in any other way is imo an abuse, as equal as evil as $\color{\red}{Highlighting}\text{ with }Math\mathrm{J^AX}$. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Commented Mar 31, 2015 at 11:16

1 Answer 1

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Currently, it is already possible to create a block of text with a different color using MathJax:

using

 \style{background-color:[COLOR]}

Ex

  \style{background-color:orange}{\ce{YBa2Cu3O7}}

$$\style{background-color:orange}{\ce{YBa2Cu3O7}}$$

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  • $\begingroup$ That's true, although I see that as an eyesore. The block text banner looks so much more clean in comparison. Thanks for the answer, though. $\endgroup$
    – Nerdatope
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 6:16
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, John, I had completely forgotten about that. $\endgroup$
    – jonsca
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 18:47

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