On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu> wrote:
Quoting David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:
> Personally? I'd need to see something of
convincing methodology. A
> thread on the XKCD forums isn't it for me.
That's understandable. I did earlier back propose
a general poll advertised at
the top of pages for readers. Would that satisfy you?
That sort of thing would probably constitute actual data. I doubt I'd
lift a finger to advocate putting a spoiler poll in the sitenotice,
but if you think it can be swung ...
> Well, yeah. But (as noted on said XKCD forum)
people don't complain
> that Cliff's Notes doesn't contain spoiler warnings either. Wikipedia
> is far closer to Cliff's Notes in purview than IMDB.
That's a good point.
David, could you possibly explain what disadvantage you see to having spoiler
tags where they are suppressed unless someone chooses otherwise?
* Mainly that they're inappropriate to an encyclopedia.
* Having spoiler warnings at all was warping actual article content -
the issue originally raised as the reason for the original MFD for
[[Template:Spoiler]].
* A plot summary warning that it contains plot elements is ridiculous.
Those are off the top of my head. The rest are in several metric tons
of [[Wikipedia talk:Spoilers]].
- d.