[WikiEN-l] Actual data on spoiler warning uses by the public

[John Lee]

On Dec 15, 2007 8:18 PM, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
> > Quoting Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com>:
> >
> > > On 16/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
> > >> See http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6424&p=147306#p147306
> > >>
> > >> In retrospect I'm not sure why no one did this before. The sample isn't
> > >> exactly
> > >> representative (since it is xkcd fora). But one interesting thing
> > >> seems clear;
> > >> the public prefers spoiler warnings on Wikipedia and uses them.
> > >
> > > Well... thirty people on an internet forum prefer spoiler warnings and
> > > use them. I'm not entirely sure we can generalise from that to "the
> > > public" with any degree of confidence.
> >
> > That's true. The sample size is very small. But considering that one argument
> > made in favor of spoiler removal was that the spoiler-removal was favored by
> > the public this preliminary data doesn't seem to back that up at all and if
> > anything shows the other direction.
> >
>
> Is there anyway to avoid having always visible spoiler warnings, while
> allowing users who care about such things to either set a preference
> to collapse spoiler sections or to be able to set a user.css or
> user.js function to hide those sections?
>
> There does seem to be a few compromise positions available.

Yes, there is. I was one of the few (perhaps the only one) advocating
them at the time of the debate on spoiler warnings. For some reason
it's a compromise palatable to neither side. I guess that's why they
call it a compromise.

Johnleemk