[WikiEN-l] From the Dawn of Spoilers

[Philip Sandifer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Crying_Game&oldid=288389

Created by The Cunctator during the first debate on spoilers, back in  
2001, when people kept citing [[The Crying Game]] as an article that  
should have a spoiler warning despite the article not existing at the  
time.

(He did similar entries for The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and Psycho,  
all equally funny. Fight Club is actually probably my favorite of  
them, though it takes some digging to find, as it's in the history of  
an abandoned redirect at present.)

Don't you miss the good old days when our articles got straight to  
the point?

In similar retro fashion, we have the long-departed [[User:CGS]]  
realizing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? 
title=Wikipedia_talk:Warn_readers_about_spoilers&diff=1075454&oldid=1075 
451

Isn't it great when people are prescient?

And for those who are particularly interested in wiki-history, the  
major justification for spoiler warnings in the first place was that  
people wouldn't know that Wikipedia was an encyclopedia and so would  
be surprised by the spoilers. Which is probably a moot issue by now.

You can also find out such great information as that the spoiler  
warning's first supporter, [[User:Koyaanis Qatsi]], felt that they  
were overused back in 2003. That Larry Sanger liked spoiler warnings  
back in the day. And that [[User:Eclecticology]]'s position on  
spoilers has not changed in five years: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/ 
index.php? 
title=Wikipedia_talk:Warn_readers_about_spoilers&diff=66407&oldid=66398  
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? 
title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Policies/ 
Wikipedia:Spoiler_warning&diff=prev&oldid=131147552

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a  
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >