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

[Martin Pyne]

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I know that many of the people I've talked to at my college prefer the
spoiler warnings, but I'll admit that this is purely anecdotal and not
statistically valid. It's hard to see how we'd acquire statistically
significant data regarding Wikipedia policies among the general
Wikipedia-reading public.

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.
>

- --
Martin C. Pyne                      Harvey Mudd College, Class of 2009
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."
                               -- Salvor Hardin
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