On 5/22/07, Gabe Johnson gjzilla@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/21/07, Skyring skyring@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/20/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Surely one would expect ==Plot summary== to contain plot elements in an encyclopedic manner.
It's entirely unclear how a fear of knowledge suits editing an
encyclopedia.
The whole thing is a spoiler. If I turn to an article on a World Series game just concluded, I will see the result because some enthusiastic editor/fan has just put it there, even if I have it recorded the game
for my
later consumption and delight, and merely turned to the article to get
the
lineup.
Cliff's Notes, texts on Shakespeare, even reviews of current films and novels, all contain plot details, with never a spoiler warning in sight. Reviews in newspapers and magazines might OMIT key items and outcomes so
as
not to ruin plot twists, but they never put up spoiler warnings for the details they give away.
On my own head be it if I look up a film and find out that the butler
did
it, or that Hamlet dies in the final scene.
I have encountered spoiler warnings in online discussion groups about current television series of the opus of an author, but in such groups,
many
participants have not seen or read all the material, and (more to the
point)
a warning is placed so that they don't open or read a post, when they
might
read many others from the same source.
What person, I ask, what thinking person is going to go to an article on Harry Potter and the Order of the Boot and be surprised to find plot
details
freely given away? Surely they would expect the plot to be described and would be righteously indignant if we didn't describe it. Are we writing
an
encyclopaedia for cretins?
-- Peter in Canberra
That's not the point. We still have the spoiler information. We just provide a convienient template (which you can hide) so that the reader can be warned. It is a minor service provide. If it seriously sacrifices the integrity of the article (as is apparently the case in [[The Crying Game]],) we can choose to omit it, or provide a warning for the entire article. I would not be against editing of the guidelines to reflect this, but don't simply discard them entirely.
The problem, as I and others have raised, is that defining a spoiler is extremely difficult to do without violating [[WP:NOR]]. How do we know what a spoiler is? You may just know it, but your subjective judgment will obviously differ from others, and without a source we can turn to, there's no way we can agree on what a spoiler is.
The result is that in many cases, spoiler tags encompass whole sections of articles, even if not really necessary, simply because someone feels that X is a spoiler and should be covered. As someone (I think it was Phil Sandifer?) pointed out, in such a case, we might as well mark the whole encyclopaedia with spoiler tags because virtually every bit of information could be an unwanted surprise to someone.
Johnleemk