On 15/05/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/14/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Someone once tried to add the spoiler template to [[Night (book)]] -- which is about the Holocaust. :-|
I've seen it on [[Samuel Pepys]] before, because there was material in there that might spoil "anything based on this dudes work" (I quote directly)
I mean, sheesh. Even *if* there are people out there who read diarists as though they were novels, and then go to read about the diarist in an encyclopedia, would they really expect to avoid reading about a ten-year period in the author's life just to avoid anything interfering with the book?