[WikiEN-l] {{spoiler}} vs. writing a goddamn encyclopedia

Philip Sandifer snowspinner at gmail.com
Tue May 15 02:29:59 UTC 2007


Although this issue has been done to death (though I tend to think  
the debate has mostly been a matter of people from outside the  
relevant fandoms saying "Erm, these are totally unencyclopedic" and  
then the fandoms shouting a lot and getting their way), I'd like to  
note that the focus on spoiler warnings and on not revealing spoilers  
in an article is, in a fundamental sense, totally contrary to the  
process of writing an encyclopedia.

I submit [[Valen]] as the most flagrant current example of this.  
Valen, for those of you not up on your fandom, is a minor character  
in the television show Babylon 5. He is most notable for doing a  
bunch of stuff in the far past before the series starts. Over the  
first two and a half seasons a bunch of scattered things are revealed  
about him. Then, in season 3, there's a big reveal where we find out  
that he's actually a character from the present of the show that  
travels back in time. It's all very awesome and great.

Here's the problem - the substantive portions of this topic are all  
things that have to be written from a post-season 3 perspective.  
There is no good spoiler-free lead for this article. Any lead that  
attempts to be spoiler-free is, by its nature, going to be a  
misleading opening. It is impossible to do the job of summarizing the  
major aspects of the topic and the job of remaining spoiler-free. And  
as a result, the article is a complete piece of shit. It's not even  
trying to be an encyclopedia article.

There are other cases like this - [[The Crying Game]] is a travesty  
of an article because the single most interesting aspect of the movie  
isn't actually revealed until the sixth paragraph. And there are lots  
of cases like this. You'd never know [[Sue Dibny]] is a flashpoint  
for a major debate about women in mainstream comics until you've read  
half the article. Why? Because it happened in a fairly recent comic,  
and fans buried it under spoiler warnings.

This is a massive problem. It was one thing when we allowed the use  
of "spoiler" warnings as a perceived favor to readers. But this is  
unacceptable - the focus on not revealing spoilers is being used as a  
pretext to write bad articles. It is clear that the policy of taking  
care with spoilers and the policy of writing an encyclopedia are, in  
numerous cases, alien to one another.

Bold proposal: Nuke the spoiler template. Nuke all "spoiler"  
policies. People may well get burnt on one or two articles they read  
before they will come to a simple and obvious realization -  
encyclopedia articles on a topic reveal information about that topic.  
If you have a desire to not know things about a topic, you probably  
shouldn't go look it up in an encyclopedia.

This should be obvious. Our mission is to provide information, not  
hide it.

-Phil



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