On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
This is not an invitation to revive the whole spoiler debate, but this situation is slightly different in that those involved in putting the play on and the descendants of the author are speaking out against this. I suppose it is an argument for spoilers if those involved request it. There is something similar going through the courts at the moment regarding the identity of the Stig, the test driver on the BBC program Top Gear.
As I understand it, Stig's contract with the BBC states he must not reveal his identity. The Foundation has not entered into any contracts with artists not to reveal their denouements.
Personally I mourned the loss of the spoiler tags. However, I now simply avoid articles on books/films that I might digest in future after reading a spoiler once. I learned by getting slapped on the nose and decided "I won't do that again".
However, I would like our article on Lost to tell me everything. I decided after series one that they probably wouldn't ever resolve all my outstanding questions about early events and I didn't want to sit through the dreadful drama only to end up horribly frustrated when I'd devoted tens of hours in a forlorn search for meaning. So I stopped watching it early in series two. However, I'd still like to know the entire plot, including spoilers, at some stage, just to see if I was wise not to trust them with my heightened sense of curiosity.
This doesn't rule out details being hidden behind something clickable, which I take no strong view on. But I do think that we should make the spoiler available somehow, partly because not divulging it strikes me as rather a commercially driven way to approach a work. If we leave the reader hanging it is more likely to drive our reader to the work in question so they can get resolution; that's not what we're here for.
Take, for example, someone doing research for a piece on film endings of a certain type (eg "ends with fatal car crash" or "murderer is revealed as a close relative"); they should be able to use Wikipedia to research such a piece rather than have us lead them tantalisingly close to something that might be of value to them but ultimately have them navigating sweatily to Amazon.com.