Zero wrote:
how are we as editors to know this..? As I do recall in a previous encounter concerning a lad I went to school with, he and I posessed very different views on what a "spoiler" was.
As neutral editors, we also have a differing capacity on content is a plot twist or what is considered the climax. It is only reasonable to conclude this is what happens. This template simply smacks of what intrepretation is left to the editor.
But all sorts of interpretation is left to editors -- what facts to present, how best to present them, in which order, etc.
I'm sorry you don't like the spoiler templates. But the simple fact is that most people *do*. We had a poll on this a little while back and the results were something like 7:1 in favor of keeping them. Many, many editors expressed the very strong opinion that spoiler warnings are "obviously" a good thing.
I say this not to suggest that you're wrong for having a contrary opinion (which is of course your and everyone's right) but to make the point that to most people it's reasonably obvious where a spoiler template ought to go, and what sorts of thing constitute spoilers worthy of protection.
(Now, to be sure, I don't know if the people in that poll were voting as editors or as readers. On the one hand we don't have any way of polling our readers per se, but on the other hand, since we're the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, *every* reader is an editor, and vice versa.)
Since there's a small but vocal minority which is very strongly opposed to the spoiler tags, clearly what we need is some custom CSS magic which will turn them off for readers who think they're ugly or unprofessional-looking or who otherwise don't want to see them.