[WikiEN-l] Deleting over 45000 items

[The Mangoe]

On 6/20/07, Brock Weller <brock.weller at 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.