Spoilers - Ned Scott's comment - WikiEN-l

16 May 2007

It seems that all people have to do is abuse a system for something it
wasn't supposed to do to have it deleted. (WP:PAN, WP:ESP, etc) After
trawling half the discussion I found the following exchange in the MFD.

We did discuss organizing articles around spoilers, and everyone thought it
was a bad idea... It gives undue weight, it can restrict the format, etc. *A
misuse of the spoiler template does not speak for the concept itself.* -- Ned
Scott <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott> 05:20, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

   - Which is why, notably, I nominated the policy instead of the
   template. There may well be something useful that can be done with a spoiler
   template, but a policy mandating that spoilers be hidden after templates,
   outside of section headers, etc. is a policy mandating that articles be
   written badly. Phil
Sandifer<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Sandifer>05:25;05:25, 16 May
2007 (UTC)
   - But I'm pointing this out more in response to some of the other
   comments I've been reading, and not so much on the one you've brought up.
   And also, I have no problem with continued discussion. -- Ned
Scott<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ned_Scott>05:22;05:22, 16 May 2007
(UTC)

I have to wonder. Isn't Phil scared deleting the policy/guideline is going
to open up the issue to more abuse? Instead of deleting what we have, I
think it would make sense to attempt to alter the page.
"Sensible lead writing thrumps protection against spoilers." should
definitely be kept in there, but we should somehow list the useful uses of
the template. Plot summaries are very likely to reveal important plot
details, lists of characters less so, so those could use a warning template
if those are included. Having them doesn't insult the reader if they're used
correctly (as per my example) and it isn't censoring either. Instead of
putting all of these possible examples in one pile, try finding proper uses
and rewrite the guidelines around that.

Mgm