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