[WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

[George Herbert]

On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
> >people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).
>
> "You  suspect"..? Are you telling me this template was created without any
> request by the target audiance in question...? This is ridiculous. Who  are we...?
> We're editors of an neutral encyclopedia. Its not up to us  to make such
> assumptions without founded edvidence.

Hi, I'm George, and I'm a Wikipedia Editor, and a  I'm a Wikipedia reader, too.

The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what readers
want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler
warnings are common in other online forums, and have been for a long
time, and they're there for a reason.  They're there because some
people object to spoilers.  Sometimes a majority of readers object to
spoilers.


-- 
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com