[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there actually were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
This is not the dead issue people have claimed it is, and 45000 is just the last number anyone's bothered to count. It seems blatantly obvious to me that nobody's going to be able to restore 45000 spoiler warnings; deleting them is easy, but restoring one is impossible without reading the whole article to figure out where the right place for them is. Particularly without AWB-like software. And creating "consensus" by unilaterally making an impossible-to-reverse mass change should disturb anyone, regardless of their opinion on spoiler warnings.
The correct place for them is not in an article. We are a free-content encyclopedia above all else, and should remain encyclopedic. A spoiler warning is a rather juvenile artifact of culture. I could see it on usenet or forums, but if someone came to an encyclopedia, then they should expect information. We are not here to coddle people, we are here to be useful.
There are some things consensus can't trump, foundation policy and the core values we keep (the 5 Pillars page give a nice overview). No matter how much the fanboys want to try and assert some OWNership of stories about their chosen work, they dont get to flout the encyclopedia part.
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there actually were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
This is not the dead issue people have claimed it is, and 45000 is just the last number anyone's bothered to count. It seems blatantly obvious to me that nobody's going to be able to restore 45000 spoiler warnings; deleting them is easy, but restoring one is impossible without reading the whole article to figure out where the right place for them is. Particularly without AWB-like software. And creating "consensus" by unilaterally making an impossible-to-reverse mass change should disturb anyone, regardless of their opinion on spoiler warnings.
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On 6/20/07, Brock Weller brock.weller@gmail.com wrote:
The correct place for them is not in an article. We are a free-content encyclopedia above all else, and should remain encyclopedic. A spoiler warning is a rather juvenile artifact of culture. I could see it on usenet or forums, but if someone came to an encyclopedia, then they should expect information. We are not here to coddle people, we are here to be useful.
A great many people would hold it to be "useful" for them to be able to read an article about a film/play/story which they haven't seen/read without having plot twists revealed to them. Calling that expectation "juvenile" is putting a lot of pretention behind the word "encyclopedic". Maybe "spoiler warning" isn't exactly the way to write it, but it's obvious that premtively making such a sweeping change isn't the way to go. We need to come up with a Wiki-wide policy (or policies, if we determine that different types of works need different approaches) and THEN implement it. If there's anything that's juvenile here, it's the "I dare you to revert me" BOLDness of making controversial changes without prior discussions.
For the record, I don't have any strong opinions about spoiler warnings either way. However, this puzzled me:
Brock Weller wrote:
We are a free-content encyclopedia above all else, and should remain encyclopedic. A spoiler warning is a rather juvenile artifact of culture. I could see it on usenet or forums, but if someone came to an encyclopedia, then they should expect information. We are not here to coddle people, we are here to be useful.
What if our readers find it useful to be able to read about something without having it spoiled for them?
For example, long ago an otherwise forgettable writer named Merle Kessler gave away the secret at the heart of Citizen Kane as part of a minor joke. There was no warning. When I finally saw that movie, it was a restored print at the glorious [[Michigan Theater (Ann Arbor)]]. Every time Welles hinted at the central secret of the movie, all I could think was how amazing an experience it would have been -- had the movie not been ruined for me.
Now I could imagine wanting to know something about Citizen Kane before seeing it, but without having the central mystery given away. Happily, [[Citizen Kane]] does a good job of that through careful writing. The article makes clear that a mystery is central to the plot, and the plot summary only gives away the goods at the end. You are unlikely to hit the secret accidentally.
I think that careful work could legitimately be called coddling our readers, and I think that's great. The internet already has plenty of information. What we have is a well-organized and useful service to our readers. Going out of our way not to spoil Citizen Kane for them strikes me as just as valuable as not spoiling their lunch by including the actual shock materials on our [[Shock site]] pages.
William
On 6/21/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Now I could imagine wanting to know something about Citizen Kane before seeing it, but without having the central mystery given away. Happily, [[Citizen Kane]] does a good job of that through careful writing. The article makes clear that a mystery is central to the plot, and the plot summary only gives away the goods at the end. You are unlikely to hit the secret accidentally.
This is the kind of comment that reduces me to complete and utter baffled disbelief: that the extraordinary cinematic experience of a work like Citizen Kane can be reduced in some minds to a single, rather hackneyed mcguffin, which if known in advance, in some way "spoils" the film.
We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to that kind of illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly appropriate).
This is the kind of comment that reduces me to complete and utter baffled disbelief: that the extraordinary cinematic experience of a work like Citizen Kane can be reduced in some minds to a single, rather hackneyed mcguffin, which if known in advance, in some way "spoils" the film.
We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to that kind of illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly appropriate).
The film was written in such a way as to keep the fact secret until a particular point. If you already know the secret then you are seeing the film in a way other than that which the writer intended. If the film wasn't spoilt by knowing the secret early, why would the writer have bothered to keep it secret?
Thomas Dalton wrote:
This is the kind of comment that reduces me to complete and utter baffled disbelief: that the extraordinary cinematic experience of a work like Citizen Kane can be reduced in some minds to a single, rather hackneyed mcguffin, which if known in advance, in some way "spoils" the film.
We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to that kind of illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly appropriate).
The film was written in such a way as to keep the fact secret until a particular point. If you already know the secret then you are seeing the film in a way other than that which the writer intended. If the film wasn't spoilt by knowing the secret early, why would the writer have bothered to keep it secret?
The simple fact remains that this film was released in 1941. Are there any other films from the era that we would treat the same way? Do we reveal who was the the 1939 Wizard of Oz? How do we determine which films get that treatment? At the other end of the scale, what possible benefit is there to putting spoiler warnings to every episode of a popular television series. In the old days when adventure movies were serialized, and the kids had to come back for the next Saturday matinée to see how the heroine tied to the railroad tracks would save herself from the oncoming freight train there was no point to keeping that secret beyond the next Saturday. I get terribly irritated when I'm watching an episode (of "Lost"? :-X ) and it finishes with "To be continued." That's great for those who are always at home, but I've got a meeting to go to at that same time next week. I prefer not to plan my life around TV schedules. If I know that something is always on Wednesdays at 8 o'clock, and I'm home I will probably turn the machine on. Pre-recording doesn't work, I tried that too. I have some tapes of "Startrek TNG" from years back that I recorded so that I could watch them when I got home. I still haven't watched them..If I miss an episode of "Lost" I can go to the Wikipedia article for exactly the reason of finding out exactly what I missed in that episode; it saves me the trouble of having to spend an hour watching it with all its commercials, not to mention the time and trouble that it would take to find the episode in the first place.
What doomed the spoiler warnings was their overuse. That use attached importance to every trivial plot line imaginable. If it had been saved for movies with the stature of "Citizen Kane", and warned the reader of a real potential that his experience might be spoiled the warnings might have lasted indefinitely.
Ec
The simple fact remains that this film was released in 1941. Are there any other films from the era that we would treat the same way?
I wasn't talking about spoilers in Wikipedia. I was talking about the simple fact that spoilers do spoil stories. The email I was replying to wasn't just saying that Wikipedia shouldn't have spoiler warnings but that spoilers don't spoil stories, which is, quite frankly, complete nonsense.
On 6/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The simple fact remains that this film was released in 1941. Are there any other films from the era that we would treat the same way?
I wasn't talking about spoilers in Wikipedia. I was talking about the simple fact that spoilers do spoil stories. The email I was replying to wasn't just saying that Wikipedia shouldn't have spoiler warnings but that spoilers don't spoil stories, which is, quite frankly, complete nonsense.
They don't spoil good stories. Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, Fight Club, three examples of movies which were *better* the second time around.
They don't spoil good stories. Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, Fight Club, three examples of movies which were *better* the second time around.
Sure, but would the first time have been better had you been simply told the ending? Watching a film a second time and watching it for the first time having been told the ending are very different things.
On 6/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
They don't spoil good stories. Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, Fight Club, three examples of movies which were *better* the second time around.
Sure, but would the first time have been better had you been simply told the ending? Watching a film a second time and watching it for the first time having been told the ending are very different things.
I don't know, for those three movies I think I would have enjoyed the first time of watching them more if I was told the ending. Definitely more if I was given full details about the story including the ending. And I'll add what I consider a bad movie into the mix too. The Sixth Sense. I knew there was a surprise ending when I saw that movie, but wasn't told what it was. I spent the majority of the movie *knowing* the fact which was supposed to be revealed in the end, but wasn't sure whether or not that was supposed to be the surprise. It wound up being an absolutely horrible experience, though it might have been a decent experience if I didn't know the ending *and* I didn't know that there was a surprise ending at all.
Of course, I'm only one person. Your mileage may vary.
Anthony wrote:
On 6/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
They don't spoil good stories. Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, Fight Club, three examples of movies which were *better* the second time around.
Sure, but would the first time have been better had you been simply told the ending? Watching a film a second time and watching it for the first time having been told the ending are very different things.
I don't know, for those three movies I think I would have enjoyed the first time of watching them more if I was told the ending.
I think that's a great thing for you to decide for yourself, and I have no issue with that.
Some have expressed a view that we should decide that for all our readers, against the obvious wishes of the artists whose works we cover. I think that's a mistake, and a large one.
William
William Pietri wrote:
Some have expressed a view that we should decide that for all our readers, against the obvious wishes of the artists whose works we cover. I think that's a mistake, and a large one.
"Obvious wishes of the artists"? Not part of our mission. Good thing too, because 99% of the artists wish that we would write puff pieces encouraging readers to buy. :-)
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
William Pietri wrote:
Some have expressed a view that we should decide that for all our readers, against the obvious wishes of the artists whose works we cover. I think that's a mistake, and a large one.
"Obvious wishes of the artists"? Not part of our mission. Good thing too, because 99% of the artists wish that we would write puff pieces encouraging readers to buy. :-)
If I were suggesting that, it would indeed be foolish.
Instead, I'm saying that the if Orson Welles thinks the best way to tell the Citizen Kane story is to create a mystery, we should not casually reveal it just because somebody thinks, as a couple of people on this list have suggested, that it's just as good either way.
If that were to somehow make it impossible to write a decent article, sure, the artist can get lost. But at least in this case, good organization of the article and some careful writing is enough to keep somebody from accidentally having the mystery revealed.
I'm not saying we should spoiler-safety on a pedestal above all else. But I am saying that some significant fraction of our readers haven't seen Citizen Kane but will, and would rather not accidentally learn the secret. If we can honor that, we should. Especially when the cost is a little extra elbow grease.
William
On 6/22/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
I'm not saying we should spoiler-safety on a pedestal above all else. But I am saying that some significant fraction of our readers haven't seen Citizen Kane but will, and would rather not accidentally learn the secret.
I seriously doubt it's the case that a "significant fraction" of the people who read the [[Citizen Kane]] article 1) haven't seen the movie; 2) plan on seeing the movie; 3) don't know what "rosebud" is; and 4) don't want to know what "rosebud" is. Please note that I'm not doubting that a significant fraction of the population fits those 4 criteria, but merely that a significant fraction of those people who go to Wikipedia and read the article on [[Citizen Kane]] do.
I also don't think the current [[Citizen Kane]] article is particularly useful for those who fit those 4 criteria, and I wouldn't suggest that anyone intent on not learning the secrets of a movie ever read a wiki article on that movie which anyone can edit.
On 6/21/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 6/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
They don't spoil good stories. Shawshank Redemption, Citizen Kane, Fight Club, three examples of movies which were *better* the second time around.
Sure, but would the first time have been better had you been simply told the ending? Watching a film a second time and watching it for the first time having been told the ending are very different things.
I don't know, for those three movies I think I would have enjoyed the first time of watching them more if I was told the ending.
I think that's a great thing for you to decide for yourself, and I have no issue with that.
Some have expressed a view that we should decide that for all our readers, against the obvious wishes of the artists whose works we cover. I think that's a mistake, and a large one.
You can create an article for those who haven't read the book (or watched the movie) and don't want to know the details about it. Or you can create an article for those who have read the book, plus those who don't plan to read the book, plus those who want to know more about the details before they read the book. You can't, in my opinion, create a good article that suits everyone.
Anthony wrote:
You can create an article for those who haven't read the book (or watched the movie) and don't want to know the details about it. Or you can create an article for those who have read the book, plus those who don't plan to read the book, plus those who want to know more about the details before they read the book. You can't, in my opinion, create a good article that suits everyone.
I'm saying that not only is it possible, but that we have done it in [[Citizen Kane]]. Without spoiler tags, even.
And further, I'm saying that if it's possible, we should do it.
William
Some have expressed a view that we should decide that for all our=20 readers, against the obvious wishes of the artists whose works we cover=
=2E=20
I think that's a mistake, and a large one.
The artists' obvious wishes are that you do not read an encyclopedia article on their work before you watch it. If they so wished, they would have provided one.
--=20 Sean Barrett | No, Grasshopper! Carry hibachi by handles! sean@epoptic.com |
On 6/22/07, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
Some have expressed a view that we should decide that for all our=20 readers, against the obvious wishes of the artists whose works we cover=
=2E=20
I think that's a mistake, and a large one.
The artists' obvious wishes are that you do not read an encyclopedia article on their work before you watch it. If they so wished, they would have provided one.
While most artists probably don't want you to read a Wikipedia article on their work (*) before you watch it, I don't think that follows from the fact that they haven't provided one. Producing an encyclopedia costs money and/or takes a lot of time and effort.
(*) Are there any other encyclopedias that have articles on movies which discuss plots? Encarta has an article but I can't read it, anyone care to copy/paste it and email it to me privately?
On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
The film was written in such a way as to keep the fact secret until a particular point. If you already know the secret then you are seeing the film in a way other than that which the writer intended. If the film wasn't spoilt by knowing the secret early, why would the writer have bothered to keep it secret?
The simple fact remains that this film was released in 1941. Are there any other films from the era that we would treat the same way?
I don't view a lot of 1941 films, so I don't know. I'd leave it to the people who do know, such as the people writing the articles about such films.
And if anything, you're really arguing for no year limit at all. Yeah, it's from 1941--and that makes little difference in the existence of lots of people who haven't seen it.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/21/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Now I could imagine wanting to know something about Citizen Kane before seeing it, but without having the central mystery given away. Happily, [[Citizen Kane]] does a good job of that through careful writing. The article makes clear that a mystery is central to the plot, and the plot summary only gives away the goods at the end. You are unlikely to hit the secret accidentally.
This is the kind of comment that reduces me to complete and utter baffled disbelief: that the extraordinary cinematic experience of a work like Citizen Kane can be reduced in some minds to a single, rather hackneyed mcguffin, which if known in advance, in some way "spoils" the film.
Good thing that's not what I meant, then. Or, looking back, even what said.
I'm not saying that it isn't worth seeing if you know. What I am saying is that Welles carefully, beautifully used the power of a mystery to create a deeper emotional engagement in the viewer. Citizen Kane's power isn't the story told, it's in the telling of the story. The mystery is a part of that. Without need or benefit, that experience was denied to me, in a way that smidgen of care would have averted. Instead, I got to be irritated at the revealer every time Welles gave another hint.
If Welles went to all that trouble to set up something, why exactly do you feel empowered to undo it casually? From what I've read of Welles, if some marketing hack had put a giveaway on the posters, Welles would have ripped out and eaten his still-beating heart.
It seems to me that we can write a perfectly good encyclopedia while still respecting the both the artist's intent and the experience of readers. Our [[Citizen Kane]] article does that well, and without spoiler tags. Why you'd have a problem with that I can't fathom.
We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to that kind of illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly appropriate).
Do you find that insulting the people you disagree with helps you much? Because it's not doing much for me, really.
William
I thought the whole point of Citizen Kane was that the meaning of "Rosebud" has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. It could have been anything and the movie would have been exactly the same. But maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.
"It seems to me that we can write a perfectly good encyclopedia while still respecting the both the artist's intent and the experience of readers." Frankly, I disagree. If you want to experience a movie the way the author intended it to be experienced for the first time, *don't read an article on the story beforehand*. To write a "perfectly good encyclopedia" article about Citizen Kane, or even about the movie's impact on society, without first making sure the reader knows the ending, is ridiculous. The only spoiler warning I'd support when it comes to something like Citizen Kane is one at or near the top of the article which says something to the effect of "IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS ABOUT A MOVIE, DON'T READ WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES ABOUT THAT MOVIE".
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
I thought the whole point of Citizen Kane was that the meaning of "Rosebud" has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. It could have been anything and the movie would have been exactly the same. But maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.
"It seems to me that we can write a perfectly good encyclopedia while still respecting the both the artist's intent and the experience of readers." Frankly, I disagree. If you want to experience a movie the way the author intended it to be experienced for the first time, *don't read an article on the story beforehand*. To write a "perfectly good encyclopedia" article about Citizen Kane, or even about the movie's impact on society, without first making sure the reader knows the ending, is ridiculous.
Ridiculous? But we have an article that does that very well. Have you read it? There's little chance that somebody will accidentally read the bits that would give much away, even when reading the article for other info. The plot section is clearly marked and the first sentence makes clear that there's a mystery. The secret is only revealed in the middle of the fourth paragraph of the synopsis, so anybody who wants to avoid knowing the secret can do so.
There are plenty of films I want to know something about before I see them. For something like Citizen Kane, it's worth studying the impact of the film and the historical context. Why wouldn't I turn to Wikipedia for that? And why wouldn't Wikipedia honor my desire to learn the bits I want to know without spoiling a part of the experience that is precious to me, especially if that's easily done with a bit of good writing?
William
If you just want the background, all you need to do is not read the summary. But if you are looking for a critical discussion, that would presuppose knowledge of the plot.
On 6/21/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
I thought the whole point of Citizen Kane was that the meaning of "Rosebud" has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. It could have been anything and the movie would have been exactly the same. But maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.
"It seems to me that we can write a perfectly good encyclopedia while still respecting the both the artist's intent and the experience of readers." Frankly, I disagree. If you want to experience a movie the way the author intended it to be experienced for the first time, *don't read an article on the story beforehand*. To write a "perfectly good encyclopedia" article about Citizen Kane, or even about the movie's impact on society, without first making sure the reader knows the ending, is ridiculous.
Ridiculous? But we have an article that does that very well. Have you read it? There's little chance that somebody will accidentally read the bits that would give much away, even when reading the article for other info. The plot section is clearly marked and the first sentence makes clear that there's a mystery. The secret is only revealed in the middle of the fourth paragraph of the synopsis, so anybody who wants to avoid knowing the secret can do so.
There are plenty of films I want to know something about before I see them. For something like Citizen Kane, it's worth studying the impact of the film and the historical context. Why wouldn't I turn to Wikipedia for that? And why wouldn't Wikipedia honor my desire to learn the bits I want to know without spoiling a part of the experience that is precious to me, especially if that's easily done with a bit of good writing?
William
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On 6/22/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
If you just want the background, all you need to do is not read the summary. But if you are looking for a critical discussion, that would presuppose knowledge of the plot.
Precisely. The onus is on the reader to limit their exposure; we may facilitate this, but not at the expense of other issues. Spoiler tags can often cause articles to be organised around them; shoving all spoilers into one section rarely makes for good writing. This is why often the whole plot summary section is surrounded by spoiler tags, but this means causing readers to miss out on basic elements of the plot which are not spoilers. (Not to mention that defining what constitutes a spoiler, unless one relies on a source - IIRC the BBC had a spoiler warning for its coverage of Hillary Clinton's announcement of her campaign song because the announcement spoofed the ending of the Sopranos - would probably be original research.)
I think demarcating what is a spoiler using, say, HTML tags, would make sense - it's the reason why the semantic web exists. The user can then set their client to hide those parts of the page. (I also supported a similar policy for dealing with controversial images, but that's another story...and my position here is a bit of a fringe one anyway.)
There is not always a tradeoff between spoiler tags and good writing, but quite often, there is, especially when it comes to the critical discussion encyclopaedia articles are meant to give. If you don't want to read spoilers, don't read a critical discussion of the work. I myself don't look beyond the main iMDB page of a movie - not even at the trivia or goofs sections - to avoid spoilers when I want to see the movie freshly.
Johnleemk
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 6/21/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote: We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to that kind of illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly appropriate).
Actually, I think a good encyclopaedia is capable of catering for all levels of literacy.
This seems like a good time to trot out my usual mantra, with a little twist to it (see, I spoiled you there ;): "You don't read an encyclopaedia to learn stuff you already know: you read to learn stuff you didn't already know."
What we have to bear in mind is that there are still a huge number of people---including but not limited to those younger than yourself, Tony, and indeed myself---who will not have seen "Citizen Kane". In fact I have not seen it myself; I cannot now see it in an "unspoiled" state because I have read our article. It would be a shame if we were to make a practice of deliberately ruining young people's "growing-up experience" by telling all the endings before they even get a chance to find out for themselves.
I see these sarcastic lists of "well-known endings" and I wonder whether the writers realise just how stupid they are being: maybe they *are* obvious to anybody over a certain age. but before you ever reach that age, you've got to be younger first, and if all the mysteries are spoiled for you already, what chance have you of enjoying them?
I have to say that some of the comments on this thread smack worryingly of the mean-spirited bastards who undertook the "Snape kills Dumbledore" campaign, driving past queues of people waiting to buy the book, deliberately giving away the "shock ending". We have to bear in mind that some items, like books and films, are not available to everybody at the same time: someone visiting our article on a book yet to be published where they live should not have the story thrust down their throats in the lede.
We also have to bear in mind that if someone's first experience of Wikipedia is to ruin their enjoyment of something to which they were looking forward, they might well be unlikely to return. If you are the kind of person whose reaction is "good riddance" then I think you need to reconsider your attitude very carefully.
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there actually were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
No, absolutely not, just as it isn't fair to add 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to delete them is "consensus".
This is not the dead issue people have claimed it is, and 45000 is just the last number anyone's bothered to count. It seems blatantly obvious to me that nobody's going to be able to restore 45000 spoiler warnings; deleting them is easy, but restoring one is impossible without reading the whole article to figure out where the right place for them is. Particularly without AWB-like software. And creating "consensus" by unilaterally making an impossible-to-reverse mass change should disturb anyone, regardless of their opinion on spoiler warnings.
"Creating consensus through unilateral action" doesn't disturb me, but saying that an issue as contested as spoiler warnings has a consensus for any particular position does.
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Anthony wrote:
[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there actually were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
No, absolutely not, just as it isn't fair to add 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to delete them is "consensus".
The spoiler warnings were added individually, by people creating articles and specifically deciding where a spoiler warning goes in that article. The spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in.
You don't see any difference between these two activities?
The first one made us look silly and the second one made us encyclopedic? My earlier post sums this up fairly well.
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Anthony wrote:
[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the
failure to
undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there
actually
were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
No, absolutely not, just as it isn't fair to add 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to delete them is "consensus".
The spoiler warnings were added individually, by people creating articles and specifically deciding where a spoiler warning goes in that article. The spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in.
You don't see any difference between these two activities?
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On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Brock Weller wrote:
The first one made us look silly and the second one made us encyclopedic? My earlier post sums this up fairly well.
Changing articles without reading them looks encyclopediac, while changing articles after reading them is silly?
No offense, but if that's true, we're better off with silly.
Yeah, you completely avoided the statement. I wasn't saying removing them without looking made us look silly, I said that having them in looked silly. Well set up strawman though. Care to answer the actual statement now?
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Brock Weller wrote:
The first one made us look silly and the second one made us
encyclopedic? My
earlier post sums this up fairly well.
Changing articles without reading them looks encyclopediac, while changing articles after reading them is silly?
No offense, but if that's true, we're better off with silly.
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On 6/21/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Brock Weller wrote:
The first one made us look silly and the second one made us
encyclopedic? My
earlier post sums this up fairly well.
Changing articles without reading them looks encyclopediac, while changing articles after reading them is silly?
No offense, but if that's true, we're better off with silly.
Just to point out that tarring all folk with the same brush is not a good idea, I was one of those who spoke out in favour of removing most spoiler tags, but never endorsed automated or autopilotmated (is that a word?) removals. All removals of spoiler tags which I made were done after reading the article in question; I personally think a "hunt and destroy without thinking" approach is horrid for anything other than blatant vandalism and bad faith editing.
Johnleemk
Imo, the spoiler tags should either be deleted at once after a massive TfD/MfD debate, or individually removed depending on the article. The current rampage is insane. We need these tags, no matter how you put it. Once there is a real consensus for deleting them, they can be deleted. Anyway, I think they are redundant at the top of == Plot == headings, as the word "plot" is clear enough. For now, leave them alone.
-Salaskan
2007/6/20, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com:
On 6/21/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Brock Weller wrote:
The first one made us look silly and the second one made us
encyclopedic? My
earlier post sums this up fairly well.
Changing articles without reading them looks encyclopediac, while
changing
articles after reading them is silly?
No offense, but if that's true, we're better off with silly.
Just to point out that tarring all folk with the same brush is not a good idea, I was one of those who spoke out in favour of removing most spoiler tags, but never endorsed automated or autopilotmated (is that a word?) removals. All removals of spoiler tags which I made were done after reading the article in question; I personally think a "hunt and destroy without thinking" approach is horrid for anything other than blatant vandalism and bad faith editing.
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On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Skander - wrote:
Imo, the spoiler tags should either be deleted at once after a massive TfD/MfD debate, or individually removed depending on the article. The current rampage is insane. We need these tags, no matter how you put it. Once there is a real consensus for deleting them, they can be deleted. Anyway, I think they are redundant at the top of == Plot == headings, as the word "plot" is clear enough. For now, leave them alone.
I've already made the arguments for spoiler warnings in plot sections: 1) Not every plot element is a spoiler; it's entirely possible for a plot section to contain no spoilers. 2) Even if there were a spoiler in every plot section, spoiler warnings don't need to be put at the top. If the spoiler is at the bottom, put the warning inside the section near the bottom. The presence of the warning may be redundant, but its location isn't. 3) Good user interface design requires some redundancy. I could design a calendar that only names as many days of the week as the user can't figure out (i.e. only one day). I could design a deck of playing cards that doesn't have any numbers on it; after all, the user can count 7 clubs; why does he need a separate 7 and club symbol to tell him what he already knows? But these would be stupid.
You really shouldn't pretend that your opinion is an incontrovertible fact.
On 6/20/07, Brock Weller brock.weller@gmail.com wrote:
The first one made us look silly and the second one made us encyclopedic? My earlier post sums this up fairly well.
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Anthony wrote:
[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the
failure to
undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there
actually
were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
No, absolutely not, just as it isn't fair to add 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to delete them is "consensus".
The spoiler warnings were added individually, by people creating articles and specifically deciding where a spoiler warning goes in that article. The spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in.
You don't see any difference between these two activities?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- -Brock _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The spoiler warnings were added individually, by people creating articl=
es and
specifically deciding where a spoiler warning goes in that article. Th=
e
spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using autom=
ation
software without reading the articles they were in. =20 You don't see any difference between these two activities?
It is entirely untrue that "spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in." Until that /doubtless-inadvertent certainly-completely-innocent/ error of fact is corrected, this discussion will have little or nothing to do with reality.
--=20 Sean Barrett | Portions of this message were sean@epoptic.com | composed using a computer.
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Sean Barrett wrote:
It is entirely untrue that "spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in."
If you assume it takes a minute per article, 45000 articles is 750 hours of nothing but reading Wikipedia articles. And the number 45000 is only the last number we have; it isn't really the total.
It's impossible to read all those articles. It *had* to be done without reading the articles (and certainly without achieving consensus on each article individually.)
Ken Arromdee stated for the record:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Sean Barrett wrote:
It is entirely untrue that "spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in."
If you assume it takes a minute per article, 45000 articles is 750 hours of nothing but reading Wikipedia articles. And the number 45000 is only the last number we have; it isn't really the total.
It's impossible to read all those articles. It *had* to be done without reading the articles (and certainly without achieving consensus on each article individually.)
It was not done by "one or two people" -- there were dozens if not hundreds involved.
It was not done by "people using automation software" unless you broaden "automation software" into meaninglessness -- I used a tabbed browser.
It takes far less than one minute to determine that "Three Little Pigs," "Thousand Nights and a Night," and "Hamlet" do not need spoiler warnings. Using a more reasonable estimate of six seconds to scan an article to determine if the spoiler tag is there to protect some revelation on the order of someone dying in one of Shakespeare's tragedies, we find that 45000 articles can be corrected by 100 editors in (gasp) 45 minutes.
There is no truth in your statement quoted above, and no point in further discussion.
On 20/06/07, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
It was not done by "people using automation software" unless you broaden "automation software" into meaninglessness -- I used a tabbed browser.
Indeed. AutoWikiBrowser is a *browser*. It's basically a MediaWiki client HTTP browser for doing tedious and repetitive editing, like zapping gratuitous spoiler warnings in sections already headed "Plot summary" or "Synopsis" or similar. There's a rendered version at the top of the window (an embedded MSHTML control from Internet Explorer), below that is a list of articles you can read in, a bunch of controls and a window of wikitext to glance over.
There's restrictions on who can use the precompiled binary version (the AWB checklist) - basically users of reasonable experience - though it's GPL code and anyone can compile a copy themselves which doesn't use the checklist if they have MS Visual Studio to hand.
It takes far less than one minute to determine that "Three Little Pigs," "Thousand Nights and a Night," and "Hamlet" do not need spoiler warnings. Using a more reasonable estimate of six seconds to scan an article to determine if the spoiler tag is there to protect some revelation on the order of someone dying in one of Shakespeare's tragedies, we find that 45000 articles can be corrected by 100 editors in (gasp) 45 minutes.
To be fair, I did zap 10-20,000 {{spoiler}} tags personally.
- d.
On 20/06/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 20/06/07, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
It takes far less than one minute to determine that "Three Little Pigs," "Thousand Nights and a Night," and "Hamlet" do not need spoiler warnings. Using a more reasonable estimate of six seconds to scan an article to determine if the spoiler tag is there to protect some revelation on the order of someone dying in one of Shakespeare's tragedies, we find that 45000 articles can be corrected by 100 editors in (gasp) 45 minutes.
To be fair, I did zap 10-20,000 {{spoiler}} tags personally.
I note also that although I tried not to hit any article twice, I did inadvertently in some cases, and those who wanted the spoilers on were not reluctant to tell me so on my talk page. These were erroneous and I did and do apologise for such cases.
- d.
I think this was a case that cried out for mass removal. The opposition to the indiscriminate sprinkling of spoiler tags, often on grossly inappropriate locations such as on the biography of Roger Bacon and the article "Ultimate fate of the universe", which is primarily concerned with eschatology, was considerable, and most of the spoiler tags place on legitimate articles of fictional subjects immediately followed a self-explanatory section heading like "Plot", "Plot summary", or "Synopsis".
Only a purge was acceptable in those circumstances. The consensus for the purge can be measured by the fact that 45,000 spoiler tags died almost unmourned, and the former proliferation of spoiler tags can now be kept under control with ease under the new guideline, which does permit them to be placed where it is reasonable to do so.
Finally we *are* an encyclopedia. These trappings of the Usenet origins of many of our early editors are unfit for an encyclopedia and badly needed to be pensioned off. Good riddance to them and, to those who did it, warm thanks for a job well done.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I think this was a case that cried out for mass removal. The opposition to the indiscriminate sprinkling of spoiler tags, often on grossly inappropriate locations such as on the biography of Roger Bacon and the article "Ultimate fate of the universe", which is primarily concerned with eschatology, was considerable, and most of the spoiler tags place on legitimate articles of fictional subjects immediately followed a self-explanatory section heading like "Plot", "Plot summary", or "Synopsis".
There's something to be said about putting a spoiler note on the ultimate fate of the universe. Since the death of Douglas Adams there's not likely to be many of us who know how it all ends. :-)
Only a purge was acceptable in those circumstances. The consensus for the purge can be measured by the fact that 45,000 spoiler tags died almost unmourned, and the former proliferation of spoiler tags can now be kept under control with ease under the new guideline, which does permit them to be placed where it is reasonable to do so.
The notices do remain in a number of places outside the article namespace. Notably, a lot of user pages use a tool box which includes the spoiler warning templates. Removing it from that tool box could avoid encouraging newbies from starting to add it all over again.
Finally we *are* an encyclopedia. These trappings of the Usenet origins of many of our early editors are unfit for an encyclopedia and badly needed to be pensioned off. Good riddance to them and, to those who did it, warm thanks for a job well done.
Thanks. The ones that I removed were all done the old-fashioned way, but I never felt inspired to read through the endless cruft of old TV episode plots. Tolerant as I may be of others' cruft, I balk at the thought that it may be required reading.
Ec
On 6/21/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Only a purge was acceptable in those circumstances. The consensus for the purge can be measured by the fact that 45,000 spoiler tags died almost unmourned, and the former proliferation of spoiler tags can now be kept under control with ease under the new guideline, which does permit them to be placed where it is reasonable to do so.
The notices do remain in a number of places outside the article namespace. Notably, a lot of user pages use a tool box which includes the spoiler warning templates. Removing it from that tool box could avoid encouraging newbies from starting to add it all over again.
That's good thinking. I know it's been removed from some article templates, too, but I hadn't thought of general toolboxes.
The rate of spoiler placing however, is very low. Those still placing them often seem to be occasional editors who presumably do so out of habit. The very active Doctor Who project, as a whole, simply seems to have regarded the affair as a non issue, although about half a dozen of the more recent articles are full of information about the season three plot arc. I think the latest episode article has a new "current fiction" tag, and the 2006 Christmas special has a spoiler tag because it contains information that only crops up in the latest episode.
Finally we *are* an encyclopedia. These trappings of the Usenet origins of many of our early editors are unfit for an encyclopedia and badly needed to be pensioned off. Good riddance to them and, to those who did it, warm thanks for a job well done.
Thanks. The ones that I removed were all done the old-fashioned way, but I never felt inspired to read through the endless cruft of old TV episode plots. Tolerant as I may be of others' cruft, I balk at the thought that it may be required reading.
I have removed quite a lot of them, again all by hand. All Doctor Who episodes from 1963 to May 2005. Somebody else removed the remainder using AWB.
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Tony Sidaway wrote:
I think this was a case that cried out for mass removal. The opposition to the indiscriminate sprinkling of spoiler tags, often on grossly inappropriate locations such as on the biography of Roger Bacon and the article "Ultimate fate of the universe", which is primarily concerned with eschatology, was considerable, and most of the spoiler tags place on legitimate articles of fictional subjects immediately followed a self-explanatory section heading like "Plot", "Plot summary", or "Synopsis".
I've argued against this like, I don't know, 20 times?
Plot sections -- do not always contain spoilers -- when they do contain spoilers, may contain spoilers only in some places, so it makes sense to put a spoiler warning partway through the section (making the warning non-redundant since it provdes information about the location of the spoiler in the section) -- should contain spoiler warnings anyway merely for user interface consistency. I can just imagine you at Microsoft saying "everyone knows that you can close a program by clicking on the X in the corner, so take out that File/ Quit option."
On 21/06/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
-- should contain spoiler warnings anyway merely for user interface consistency.
User interface consistency? Spoiler warnings are a part of an online encyclopaedia's user interface?
Seriously, either we cut this junk out or rename the tagline from "the free encyclopaedia" to "the free bag of trivia".
Zoney
Not every plot element is a spoiler.
True, but determining which are spoilers is very subjective, and those that are spoilers will be mixed up with those that aren't in any well written summary. Yes, you could put a spoiler warning half way through the summary allowing people to just read the beginning and not spoil the ending, but what really is the point? How many people are likely to want to know the beginning of the plot and not the end? (And people trying to decide if they want to watch the film don't count - they are looking for a blurb, not the first half of a plot summary, they serve very different purposes.)
On 6/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Plot sections -- do not always contain spoilers
Good plot summaries do. It's not much of a plot summary if it doesn't summarise the plot, is it?
Quite.
There should be a more general warning. Place it at the very top of every single article on the encyclopedia
"WIKIPEDIA
The Free Encyclopedia"
There, that should be enough warning.
On Jun 21, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Ken Arromdee wrote:
Plot sections -- do not always contain spoilers
Depends on your definition of spoiler. To the most spoiler averse, any plot element is a spoiler. I've been bitched out by people for revealing publicly available casting information about episodes of TV shows.
What level of spoilerphobia do you want to accommodate?
-Phil
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Sean Barrett wrote:
It is entirely untrue that "spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in."
If you assume it takes a minute per article, 45000 articles is 750 hours of nothing but reading Wikipedia articles. And the number 45000 is only the last number we have; it isn't really the total.
It's impossible to read all those articles. It *had* to be done without reading the articles (and certainly without achieving consensus on each article individually.)
If you assume the "one or two people" part is correct. However, I just checked 4 articles on movies and found 4 different people removing the tag: Tony Sidaway, Eclecticology, David Gerard, Zoz. Add myself to the list and we're already up to five people.
I can't speak for the others, but when I removed the tag I was not using automation software. I certainly didn't read the entire article each time though, and I don't see any reason why I should have to.
On 6/20/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Anthony wrote:
[[Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler]]
Is it really fair to delete 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to undelete them is "consensus"? (Especially when it turns out there actually were hundreds restored, but they kept getting deleted anyway)
No, absolutely not, just as it isn't fair to add 45000 spoiler warnings and claim that the failure to delete them is "consensus".
The spoiler warnings were added individually, by people creating articles and specifically deciding where a spoiler warning goes in that article. The spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in.
You don't see any difference between these two activities?
I think you're mischaracterizing the activities. I for one have been removing spoiler warnings whenever I come across them for well over a year.
Ken Arromdee stated for the record:
The spoiler warnings were added individually, by people creating articles and specifically deciding where a spoiler warning goes in that article. The spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in.
It is entirely untrue that "spoiler warnings were deleted en masse by one or two people using automation software without reading the articles they were in." Until that /doubtless-inadvertent certainly-completely-innocent/ error of fact is corrected, this discussion will have little or nothing to do with reality.
Ken Arromdee stated for the record:
And creating "consensus" by unilaterally making an impossible-to-reverse mass change should disturb anyone, regardless of their opinion on spoiler warnings.
It wasn't unilateral (assuming a definition of "unilateral" similar to the English-language one). I can personally assure you that there were others working with me.
It wasn't unilateral (assuming a definition of "unilateral" similar to the English-language one). I can personally assure you that there were others working with me.
There was plenty of support for removing them, so it was far from unilateral. Whether or not there was a consensus is questionable, but there was certainly a large amount of support.
The matter wasn't helped by people not reading the articles carefully before removing tags, though - for example, I had to replace a spoiler tag *twice* in a particular article that was in the Cast section just before it was mentioned that a member of the cast had left following the death of their character. A Cast section is most certainly not a plot summary or anything similar - if it is ever right to use spoiler tags (and there most certainly is *not* consensus to remove all tags), then there should be one there.
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Thomas Dalton wrote:
The matter wasn't helped by people not reading the articles carefully before removing tags, though
But one of the problems is that if you're deleting tens of thousands of them at once, you're *not* going to be reading the article. It's not just that someone slipped up once and didn't read an article, it's that people consciously chose to avoid reading the articles so they could delete en masse. It's just not *possible* to delete tens of thousands of spoiler warnings and still read the articles, and anyone who deletes that way damn well knows it in advance.
If it was just a slip up rather than a calculated action, it wouldn't be so bad.
Ken Arromdee wrote:
...nobody's going to be able to restore 45000 spoiler warnings; deleting them is easy, but restoring one is impossible without reading the whole article to figure out where the right place for them is.
Not to condone the mass deletion (which I'm annoyed if not outraged at myself), but:
Has no one yet written a bot to iterate over all the contributions from a particular user over a particular time period and undo them, perhaps with oversight? I was thinking of writing such a tool to clean up after persistent vandals and bots run amok, but it'd obviously be useful here, too.
On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:55:52 -0700 (PDT), arromdee@rahul.net (Ken Arromdee) wrote:
It seems blatantly obvious to me that nobody's going to be able to restore 45000 spoiler warnings; deleting them is easy, but restoring one is impossible without reading the whole article to figure out where the right place for them is.
Thing is, there seems to be broad agreement that a very substantial majority of them were redundant or absurd. What proponents of spoiler warnings appear to be reluctant to do is go to the Talk pages of the articles they think should have warnings, and make a case.
I don't think anyone is going to seriously dispute the removal of spoiler tags from classical Greek and Roman texts, Dickens, Shakespeare, nursery rhymes and so on.
The problem was that they appear to have been inserted pretty much indiscriminately. While there are a few people who think that spoiler warnings should be in pretty much everything, and some who think they should never be in anything, I suspect that most people would take a more pragmatic view much as suggested on the guideline page: generally redundant in plot or synopsis sections but defensible with a rationale where there is agreement in the sources that a certain piece of information is a spoiler, and where the subject is new enough that meaningful numbers of people will not know it. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the usual example.
Guy (JzG)