On 5/31/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Net outcome: If your article needs {{spoiler}}, it's defective enough it may as well be tagged {{cleanup}}.
Is that a change to the guideline, or just your reading of the apparent consensus on the talk page? I'd obviously rather remove my own toenails than read the entire discussion, but I don't want to be totally ignorant.
David is exaggerating. However, many of Wikipedia's articles on fiction go into mind-numbing plot detail, thanks to an army of contributors each of which has a little bit more to add (or, in some cases, one obsessed fan).
It's a real pity that I feel so strongly at odds with consensus. That hasn't happened for me with Wikipedia before. I do feel that there is a place for spoiler warning tags on most articles about fictional subjects, and I don't accept that "a plot summary inherently contains spoilers so don't read it if you don't want the spoilers".
For me, the convincing argument is that such warnings are nigh-on never used in reference works elsewhere. Spoiler warnings everywhere were AFAIK a Usenet invention.
Of course, we're not necessarily bound by precedent, but that precedent does make me believe that spoiler warnings have to justify themselves rather convincingly.
-Matt