I do not think many people are advocating removing information like the plot of a novel, movie or play.
A vocal minority has successfully argued that information should be removed from articles indicating that certain parts of the article may contain information that would spoil one's enjoyment of the novel, movie or play.
Whether a part of an article is a spoiler or not (and it's certainly not a black & white issue) is an interesting bit of metadata to add. There's a variety of ways to display this information in an articles -- collapsible paragraphs, a "spoiler warning" alert, white on white text, etc. Any of these display methods could have a "enough with the spoiler warnings" or "don't hide plot points from me anymore" -- that's just a UI point.
Of course, it's a little late for that now. All that information was removed. Too bad.
Michel Vuijlsteke
On 31 August 2010 15:53, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
The idea that we should hide or withhold obviously pertinent information - like the plot of a novel, movie, play, etc. in an article about same - has always struck me as anti-encyclopedia. Personally, I often look up articles on these subjects just to find out details of the plot... are you considering my needs as a reader when you make the paternalistic decision to scrub these articles of "spoilers"? I'm frustrated to find, on a regular basis, articles of this type stripped of all but the most general plot information - reduced, essentially, to the marketing blurbs put out by whoever publishes the content. Often you can find the plot information in the article history, and I've restored several of them, but who knows how many readers have come to the article hoping to see the plot and been disappointed by its absence? Encyclopedia articles ought to be comprehensive, and we rightly shoot down proposals aimed at the opposite.
~Nathan
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