On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)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.