[WikiEN-l] Have we ever had a reader complaint of a lack of spoiler tags?

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 5/20/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On May 19, 2007, at 7:44 PM, Steve Summit wrote:
>
> > That's a good point, but it's not the sort of thing I can imagine
> > people complaining about.  (And in any case: we *do* generally
> > have the warnings!  "See how good it works?"  This isn't a case
> > of elephants in cherry trees.)
> >
>
> Nah. We only ever had spoiler tags on 45,000 articles. Trivia
> sections and fictional subjects make up far more than 2.5% of our
> articles.
> >
>
> > Conjecture isn't necessarily fallacious.  We are all, most of us,
> > readers as well as editors.  The people who like spoiler warnings
> > and argue for their retention are all, presumably, people who
> > appreciate spoiler warnings in the text they read.  The set of
> > people who appreciate them (and would mourn their passing) is
> > clearly not empty.
>
> I would have thought this, except everybody's arguments for spoiler
> warnings have been remarkably phrased in terms of hypothetical
> readers. Nobody has said "Actually, I would be surprised to find a
> spoiler in a section on the plot" or "Actually, this spoiler in this
> article ruined Buffy's finale for me." I do find this telling.
>
> -Phil


The reason we had no one complain is because their implementation is
somewhat rampant right now.
We should ask ourselves if people would start complaining if we removed
them.

Mgm