On 16/11/2007, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I'm glad you asked. Among the arguments *in all sincerity* advanced by advocates of spoiler warnings:
- Returning spoiler warnings to all plot sections, because it is non-
obvious that plot sections contain spoilers
It is apparently non-obvious that they should. Perhaps if you put the things back people would be more likely to write a complete plot summery.
- Recoding Wikipedia to have spoiler tags that can be hidden or shown
via user preference (as opposed to via an ugly monobook setting, presumably)
Are you seriously suggesting I should use monobook on wikipedia. Bad enough the source pretty much forces you to use it.
- Polling about spoiler warnings in the site notice.
I've seen worse uses of site notice.
- Returning to the use of handmade spoiler tags because the TfD
result is obviously a consensus to do it that way, and anyway then people can't find them via "what links here"
Seems reasonable. TFD results are on a version of the template not the idea. Same as AFD is a vote on the existing versions(s) of the article. IF you are relying on the software working in a certain way to fight policy battles I would suggest your methods are fundamentally against the principles of consensus.
- Including spoiler warnings whenever a reviewer can be found who
uses a spoiler warning because then it's sourced information and it can't be removed
Eh? Just a specific version of a generic tactic.
When I describe the utter repetitive frustration of dealing with this for six months, I am not exaggerating. Policy formation should not be that tortuous.
Since it will impact several thousand editors and several million readers it should be rather more tortuous. Would keep policy bloat down a bit.