Quoting Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com:
On Nov 16, 2007, at 11:53 AM, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 16/11/2007, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
If the whole thing was limited to removing spoiler warnings from nursery rhymes, I wouldn't complain. The typical article with a spoiler warning removed is not about a nursery rhyme, and you have to know this.
No, the *typical* spoiler warning was one that warned that the ==Plot summary== might reveal important details about the plot.
I don't think anyone is defending the spoiler warnings ahead of plot summaries either. However, given that, I'm having trouble thinking of what sort of spoiler uses the defenders are still in favor of. Examples might be helpful.
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
Ok, this argument is clearly bad.
- Recoding Wikipedia to have spoiler tags that can be hidden or shown
via user preference (as opposed to via an ugly monobook setting, presumably)
Hmm, I don't see what is wrong with this option. I mean, the developers have much higher priorities, but I don't see what is fundamentally bad about this idea.
- Polling about spoiler warnings in the site notice.
Obviously not such a good idea, that would be a complete free-for all. However, it might actually give us some better idea about what the actual consensus is (which I'm not convinced is clear yet)
- 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"
Also clearly bad.
- 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
This is just wikilawyering as phrased. But it wouldn't be such a bad idea to use reviews as a rule of thumb for whether something should have a spoiler. That would give a clear line for when to use spoiler tags (and would cut down presumably on ones like Hamlet and the Three Little Pigs (although I've seen at least one review of something where it mentioned that Romeo and Juliet die as a "spoiler"- but I think that was intended to be a joke).
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.
Well, yes it should be. See the whole notion of Madisonian gridlock. If we don't have consensus we don't have consensus.
But what I'd really like to see is if someone who is a proponent of spoiler warnings could give us a few examples of where they'd want spoiler warnings where the warnings were not simply bracketing a plot section. Is anyone up to that?