On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Scholarly works aren't designed for general audiences and are (almost by definition) aimed at people already familiar with the work in question.
Exactly.
The more serious objection to this sort of thing seems at least to me that most Shakespeare was material where the general audience would have already known the basic plot.
If that's so, then don't put spoiler warnings on Shakespeare.
I really wouldn't mind much if spoiler warnings had only been removed from cases like nursery rhymes or Shakespeare. I might argue it, since not every Shakespeare play is as well known as Hamlet, but it's at least a good point.
But these inevitably get brought up in the context of removing all spoiler warnings. And most spoiler warnings are *not* nursery rhymes or Shakespeare. The bad examples are being used as an excuse to remove the not-so-bad ones.