On May 19, 2007, at 7:44 PM, Steve Summit wrote: Nah. We only ever had spoiler tags on 45,000 articles. Trivia sections and fictional subjects make up far more than 2.5% of our articles. I would have thought this, except everybody's arguments for spoiler warnings have been remarkably phrased in terms of hypothetical readers. Nobody has said "Actually, I would be surprised to find a spoiler in a section on the plot" or "Actually, this spoiler in this article ruined Buffy's finale for me." I do find this telling. -Phil

On 20/05/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: Er ... The more I think about your message, the less sense it makes. Surely one would expect ==Plot summary== to contain plot elements in an encyclopedic manner. It's entirely unclear how a fear of knowledge suits editing an encyclopedia. - d.

On 5/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Surely one would expect ==Plot summary== to contain plot elements in an encyclopedic manner. It's entirely unclear how a fear of knowledge suits editing an encyclopedia. The whole thing is a spoiler. If I turn to an article on a World Series game just concluded, I will see the result because some enthusiastic editor/fan has just put it there, even if I have it recorded the game for my later consumption and delight, and merely turned to the article to get the lineup. Cliff's Notes, texts on Shakespeare, even reviews of current films and novels, all contain plot details, with never a spoiler warning in sight. Reviews in newspapers and magazines might OMIT key items and outcomes so as not to ruin plot twists, but they never put up spoiler warnings for the details they give away. On my own head be it if I look up a film and find out that the butler did it, or that Hamlet dies in the final scene. I have encountered spoiler warnings in online discussion groups about current television series of the opus of an author, but in such groups, many participants have not seen or read all the material, and (more to the point) a warning is placed so that they don't open or read a post, when they might read many others from the same source. What person, I ask, what thinking person is going to go to an article on Harry Potter and the Order of the Boot and be surprised to find plot details freely given away? Surely they would expect the plot to be described and would be righteously indignant if we didn't describe it. Are we writing an encyclopaedia for cretins? -- Peter in Canberra

On 5/22/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla(a)gmail.com> wrote: The problem, as I and others have raised, is that defining a spoiler is extremely difficult to do without violating [[WP:NOR]]. How do we know what a spoiler is? You may just know it, but your subjective judgment will obviously differ from others, and without a source we can turn to, there's no way we can agree on what a spoiler is. The result is that in many cases, spoiler tags encompass whole sections of articles, even if not really necessary, simply because someone feels that X is a spoiler and should be covered. As someone (I think it was Phil Sandifer?) pointed out, in such a case, we might as well mark the whole encyclopaedia with spoiler tags because virtually every bit of information could be an unwanted surprise to someone. Johnleemk

On 5/21/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: *sigh* No one is suggesting eliminating, or even hiding (as in invisibility), the spoilers. We just want a little template at the top. ~~~~ -- Absolute Power C^7rr8p£5 ab£$^u7£%y

On 5/21/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: OK, here's when they will be useful. I want to know the background of the Movie X before I go out to see it. You know, the actors, filming locations, etc. But not the plot. Do I not deserve to know what will spoil my fun, even when there is a perfectly functioning and unobtrusive system established for that purpose? ~~~~ -- Absolute Power C^7rr8p£5 ab£$^u7£%y

On 5/22/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla(a)gmail.com> wrote: Don't read the ==Plot summary== section. I notice that IMDb doesn't have spoiler notices. I was there the other day looking up details of The History Boys, which I thoroughly recommend to all as a witty, philosophical, fun movie. --Pete in Canberra

G'day Gabe, You can get all that from IMDb, without the risk of your eye accidentally picking up information you don't want. I wouldn't look at Wikipedia if I wanted to avoid a spoiler, whether there was a spoiler warning or not. The warning is not effective. It doesn't assist those who you think will want it, and it serves only to annoy those who don't want it. -- Mark Gallagher "'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend." - P G Wodehouse, /Carry On, Jeeves/

On 5/21/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla(a)gmail.com> wrote: In your case, you need a review, not an encyclopedia article. Reviews are designed to give the information you need and not the information you don't want. Encyclopedia articles are not intended to replace reviews and should not be used as such. -Matt

On 5/21/07, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gmail.com> wrote: Oh, come on. That argument assumes we're mostly mindless idiots, or that we don't share any common language or culture. In most cases it's obvious whether something is a spoiler or not. Part of "Assume Good Faith" is to assume your fellow editors are humans.

On 5/23/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: I've already explained before why this is not your garden variety editorial judgment. As I said, how the heck do we draw a line at what constitutes an inappropriate surprise to readers and what does not? We *need* some point of reference for this, or it all breaks down. Johnleemk

On 5/21/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: But does it hurt anyone to say that it may contain nuts? ~~~~ -- Absolute Power C^7rr8p£5 ab£$^u7£%y

On 5/21/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: Have any of the actual readers complained about us having them? ~~~~ -- Absolute Power C^7rr8p£5 ab£$^u7£%y

On 22/05/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla(a)gmail.com> wrote: No, it insults their intelligence and makes them think the manufacturer is under the thrall of process-obsessive idiots. - d.

On 5/22/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: Only a complete nong would equate "plot details" with "spoiler". Only a complete nong would believe that a spoiler warning somehow interferes with the provision of "plot details". Grr. Steve

G'day Matt, I quite like this question, too (oh, and welcome back, Pete). Why *don't* we have spoiler warnings in sports articles? Is it because the editors on sports articles don't bring the whole fanboy culture along with them? -- Mark Gallagher "'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend." - P G Wodehouse, /Carry On, Jeeves/

On 5/22/07, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: Not that I ever left... Wikipedia is a strange place indeed if the issue of spoiler warnings generates such great volumes of heat. It's a bit like the abortion debate, really. You get people at both ends and few in the middle. Lest I be labelled a fundamentalist, may I suggest that spoiler warnings are appropriate for novels, or movies, or similar works that are less than a year old? Anything older than that is on the shelves of the second-hand bookshops, or in the dollar a week rack at the video rental. -- Peter in Canberra

On Tue, 22 May 2007, David Gerard wrote: I'm sick and tired of the argument "here's an obviously bad spoiler tag, so all spoiler tags are like that, right?" If you just don't want spoiler tags on World War II, you can fix that without changing policy: just remove the tag. Don't quote silly examples and then propose a policy change that affects a lot more than silly examples.

On Mon, 21 May 2007, Matthew Brown wrote: This situation DOES exist on Wikipedia. The readers don't expect every part of the article to be in the business of spoilers; they don't discuss how hot the characters are, but they do discuss other things which are not spoilers. One "expects the whole deal" only on a per-article basis, not on a per-section but spoilers can be put on individual sections, or even within a section if the spoiler doesn't appear at its top.

On 5/21/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: "It's entirely unclear how a fear of knowledge suits editing an encyclopedia. The whole thing is a spoiler" Nicely said. But it is the way of the web, or so it seems. "WARNING: May contain information." Even better. I'm going to post this one on my lab partner's textbook--he recently discovered that by reading the text he scores very high on all of our tests, the tests being based mostly upon the text. He was a bit surprised by this.... -------------------- Philippe sez: Had I known that, I might have done oh - so-much better in college. I wish you'd been there to enlighten me. Philippe

In other words: these sources are aware that people don't want to see spoilers, and take measures (omitting key items/outcomes) to keep spoilers away from such people. But since the measures they use aren't appropriate for us, we should use nothing at all. If anything, the fact that newspapers and magazines recognize that spoilers are a problem should suggest that we should too. (Besides, I've seen plenty of print reviews with spoiler warnings in them.)

On Wed, 23 May 2007, Skyring wrote: The trouble with finding these is that 1) most reviewers simply don't mention spoilers at all (with quite a number of them telling you they're leaving the spoiler out) 2) most reviews you'll find in a Google search aren't going to be print reviews 3) I'm on a dialup connection. Still, I managed to find a couple: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19921218/REVIEWS/… "I would prefer, in fact, that you put this review aside until you see the film. If you read on, I will do my best not to spoil your own discoveries." This one http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR200704270… has a "spoiler alert" in the middle of the article. So does this one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR200604110… Of course I can't prove these weren't added for the web version. Here's another Roger Ebert one where he not only includes a spoiler warning in the article itself, but also defends the practice of using spoiler warnings: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050129/COMMENTA… Here's a Time magazine article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1604863,00.html "Fair warning: here's where the spoilers begin."

On 23/05/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Which is the precise problem. That's how spoiler warnings end up on [[Hyde Park, London]] and [[Sleeping Beauty]]. Spoiler tags may be a nice idea, but their use needs severe reduction. See proposal at [[Wikipedia:Spoiler]]. - d.

On 5/23/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: A person who believes that encyclopaedia articles will contain spoiler warnings is, if not a cretin, woefully optimistic. This may be easily demonstrated at any library. -- Peter in Canberra

On 5/24/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: I doubt that Wikipedia was ever intended to showcase pokemon arcana or schoolchild graffiti. We hold a higher ideal. At least I do. In deference to the uptothemoment nature of Wikipedia, I'll support spoiler warnings for recent works of fiction and movies. Shakespeare or Tom Clancy, no - they belong to the ages. -- Peter in Canberra

On 5/24/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: At this point, I hear the unmistakable groaning and sighing sound of a long bow being drawn. Must Wikipedia always be a community of fundamentalists battling over which end of the egg to slice? -- Peter in Canberra

On 24/05/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: Oh, I thought the "user interface" one was pretty far-fetched myself. But maybe that's just me. - d.

On 5/24/07, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote: I can see it now. '''''Hamlet: Prince of Denmark''''' is a {{spoiler}} [[tragedy]] {{spoilerend}} by [[William Shakespeare]]. How tempting it can be to violate [[WP:POINT]]. Anthony

On 5/24/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: That's a good point. Print encyclopedias might not contain spoiler warnings, but how many of them contain plot details or even plot summaries? Would it even be legal for Brittanica to include as many details as Wikipedia when it comes to plots of copyrighted works? I doubt it. Anthony

On 5/24/07, Angela Anuszewski <angela.anuszewski(a)gmail.com> wrote: The Seinfeld Aptitude Test, which presented trivia questions and answers about the Seinfeld television series, lost a fair use argument in federal court (see Castle Rock Entertainment vs. Carol Publishing Group). How detailed is too detailed in the context of an encyclopedia? Like all other fair use questions only 9 people can say for sure. Anthony

On 5/25/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote: I don't think you'll find a court that has ever ruled that a plot is not copyrightable. The general storyline (boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, whatever) might not be copyrightable, but the plot itself is the very essence of what makes a creative fiction work. I'm not really sure what you mean about "details outside of plot". Here are some examples from the Seinfeld case: 1. To impress a woman, George passes himself off as: a) a gynecologist; b) a geologist; c) a marine biologist; d) a meteorologist 11. What candy does Kramer snack on while observing a surgical procedure from an operating-room balcony? 12. Who said, "I don't go for those nonrefundable deals . . . I can't commit to a woman . . . I'm not committing to an airline."? a) Jerry; b) George; c) Kramer I'd call those plot details, though I suppose you could get into a semantical argument with me over whether or not Seinfeld has a "plot" in the first place (the defendants in the case actually argue this as part of their defense). While like every legal question, you can only really answer it by Yes, of course, and a for-profit encyclopedia like Britannica is subject to different fair use judgment than an online non-profit one like Wikipedia. I'd personally say that any plot summary that would be detailed enough I'm not saying it all goes over the line, but I think Brittanica would have a tough time justifying some of the plot details of Wikipedia's Simpsons coverage, for instance.

Matthew Brown wrote: Yes, if I read the plot in a Wikipedia article it's to save me the trouble of wasting time to watch the movie just to find out about it. If it's going to be really long, I might as well watch the movie. Ec

Matthew Brown wrote: Even worse, single episodes of TV programmes. Nevertheless, with <s>programmes</s> soap operas like "Lost" or "Desperate Housewives" it's easy to become confused if you miss an episode. I'm just as happy reading a plot summary than going back and trying to recreate a past episode. Ec

On 24/05/07, Angela Anuszewski &lt;angela.anuszewski(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: A trivially small quotation has been held to be not fair use (well, not fair dealing) - the ruling was, I believe, that if you take the only bit of any actual interest and quote that you're damaging the ability to sell the book. I'd have to dig around a bit to find the case, but I believe it was a politicians memoirs being quoted in a newspaper. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 5/20/07, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Plot elements != spoiler. This discussion is meaningless if those two concepts are considered equivalent. Steve

On Wed, 23 May 2007, Anthony wrote: The solution to this is to reword the spoiler warning, not to eliminate it. How about "Spoiler warning: plot or ending details follow that some readers may not wish to see". Almost the same, but nobody is likely to put that on the Three Little Pigs.

On Thu, 24 May 2007, Steve Bennett wrote: That's too specific. It may reveal a surprise fact (the identity of Valen, for instance) that is not an ending, or it may reveal something that is part of an ending but not an ending in itself.

On 23/05/07, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Usually spoiler tags end up in nonfiction articles because someone puts a bit of irrelevant cruft in with a vague relation to the subject. Then it needs a tag because OMG SPOILER. WikiProject Film had a policy to spoiler everything. This led to ludicrous cruft sections with TV, book, comic, etc. versions all unspoilered, but the film adaptation in spoiler tags. The problem is not the idea of spoilers (though that sucks too) - it's that having them at all seems to lead to furiously-defended overuse. Someone seems to have put the {{spoiler}} tag on [[The Three Little Pigs]] as a joke, and then blithering idiots were edit-warring to keep it. - d.

On 5/23/07, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: But oh, by the way, simply knowing that a movie has a surprise ending is sometimes enough to ruin it. I know my experience in watching The Sixth Sense was ruined simply because I knew there was a twist in the movie, and so I found it easy to figure out what the twist was very early on (actually, I spent most of the movie debating with myself if what was the twist really was the twist, or if everyone else knew what I knew too).

On 5/24/07, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: There is some sort of false assumption here that there is ONE TRUE SPOILER WARNING. Make a new tag. Start using it accurately. Police its use. This idea isn't new. Steve

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 08:10:22AM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: {{dubious}} We have some very seriously brain-locked process fetishists around here. It just occured to me: has anyone checked [[Iliad]], [[Odyssey]], or [[Beowulf]]? [[Genji Monogatari]]? -- Sean Barrett | Portions of this message were sean(a)epoptic.com | composed using a computer.

Phil Sandifer wrote: Tailors designing fashionable clothing for the emperor? ;-) Ec

On Mon, 21 May 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: At any rate, someone just pointed out [[Talk:Shadow_of_the_Colossus]] has someone complaining about a missing spoiler warning.

G'day Steve, <snip: why don't spoilers ever generate complaints?/> People don't always write what they would like to read. Sad but true. Witness, for example, the endless trivia and "in popular culture" sections. Now, finding out at [[Jupiter]] that the megahit game [[Bug-Eyed Space Invaders With Halos Doing Moon Jumps]] was set nearby may be of interest to two or three idiots who otherwise wouldn't care a jot for the planet, but the vast majority of stuff we see in such sections is asinine ([[Statue of Liberty]] used to --- maybe still does --- have a pop culture section longer than the rest of the article, containing such gems as "The Statue featured in one Simpsons episode, where Bart shouts at some immigrants, 'Go home, the country's full!'"). As a reader --- let alone my concerns as a Wikipedia editor, and therefore self-appointed co-guardian of its content and reputation --- some pop culture sections are simply horrifying. I understand it's the same for the vast majority of readers who read it. The support of such sections is that they provide an outlet for, for example, newbies who feel they want to contribute, and say, "Hey! I saw this statue on /The Simpsons/! I don't know what it's for, but I remember a funny joke about it ..." Parts of Wikipedia, great swathes of it (see also, stub-sorting, certain infoboxen) are not there for the benefit of readers. In many cases, they exist because someone wants to write them, and doesn't give a damn whether anyone would want to read them. -- Mark Gallagher "'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend." - P G Wodehouse, /Carry On, Jeeves/

Steve Summit wrote: Yeah, they function a bit like phylacteries hung about the article to ward off the devil. But in the realm of formal logic false can imply true. "Conjecture" can be viewed as another word for "hypothesis". The conjecture that God made the world in seven days has yet to be proven, but the number of people that believe it is significant. The thread inspired me to review a few passages from that most reverential piece of literary criticism, Miguel de Unamuno's"Our Lord Don Quixote". "But the canon, a stiff-necked man stuffed with a vast amount of the crudest good sense, like all 'ergo-tists' who are more or less canons, gave vent to simple-minded arguments to the effect that there could be no doubt that the Cid had existed, as had [[Bernardo del Carpio]], though there might be some doubts as to whether they performed the feats assigned them. This canon was apparently one of those poor men who use criticism like a sieve, and who argue the point, note cards in hand, as to whether such an event happened in the way it is related, without ever noticing that the past exists no longer and the only thing which really exists now is that which acts, and that one of those so-called legends, when it moves men to action, lighting up their hearts or consoling their lives, is a thousand times more real than the account of any transaction whatever rotting in some archive. (Princeton University Press edition, 1967, pp 154-5) In other words, if all there is to these stories is these spoiled plots, there's not much in the story worth spoiling. What I found great about some of the "Star Trek" series was the way that characters dealt with the moral dilemmas that they encountered. A dry retelling of the plot of a story cannot possibly capture that, and thus spoils nothing.. Ec

Steve Bennett wrote: You mean, this spoiler warning? ==The Solution== Warning: Solution details follow. Somehow that actually seems a bit ridiculous. But maybe that's just me.

On 5/23/07, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: Dunno about you, but I don't read section headings when I'm actually reading. I use them when skimming. Steve