On May 19, 2007, at 7:44 PM, Steve Summit wrote:
That's a good point, but it's not the sort of
thing I can imagine
people complaining about. (And in any case: we *do* generally
have the warnings! "See how good it works?" This isn't a case
of elephants in cherry trees.)
Nah. We only ever had spoiler tags on 45,000 articles. Trivia
sections and fictional subjects make up far more than 2.5% of our
articles.
Conjecture isn't necessarily fallacious. We are
all, most of us,
readers as well as editors. The people who like spoiler warnings
and argue for their retention are all, presumably, people who
appreciate spoiler warnings in the text they read. The set of
people who appreciate them (and would mourn their passing) is
clearly not empty.
I would have thought this, except everybody's arguments for spoiler
warnings have been remarkably phrased in terms of hypothetical
readers. Nobody has said "Actually, I would be surprised to find a
spoiler in a section on the plot" or "Actually, this spoiler in this
article ruined Buffy's finale for me." I do find this telling.
-Phil