On 5/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 31/05/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG
<guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote:
The "recent releases" question is a tricky one - what counts as a
"recent release"? - but, for example, Tony Sidaway removed spoiler
tags from all episodes of [[Doctor Who]] before 2005. No complaint.
Actually since then some of the articles on more recent Doctor Who
episodes have had their spoiler tags removed by someone using AWB
(you, for instance!) and there hasn't been any complaint. I'm not
going to put them back if nobody else does.
A lot of the problem with spoiler-tagged plot summaries is that
they're badly-written plot summaries. A simple blow-by-blow recitation
of events will do the job, but it is often not as clear as a more
thoughtful synopsis which mentions important allusions to past and
future episodes, real world happenings and so forth.
So the real cure for spoiler tags is better writing.
Yes, I've tried this, with mixed success. I think my rewrite of the
plot of the first ever Doctor Who story is still up, and I
successfully restored Phil Sandifer's rewrite of the plot of the
second story (The Daleks), which had been reverted a while back.
Writing decent plot summaries for more recent episodes is more
problematic. I've successfully introduced a much shorter, more
readable form of writing, which seems to be popular, but writing about
Martha's character development has had a less enthusiastic reception.
Of course much of this is due to the fact that anything I write on
the subject will be tinged with original research because there are no
reliable sources on this yet.