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

[John Lee]

On 5/22/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/21/07, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/20/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Surely one would expect ==Plot summary== to contain plot elements in
> > an encyclopedic manner.
> >
> > It's entirely unclear how a fear of knowledge suits editing an
> encyclopedia.
> > The whole thing is a spoiler. If I turn to an article on a World Series
> > game just concluded, I will see the result because some enthusiastic
> > editor/fan has just put it there, even if I have it recorded the game
> for my
> > later consumption and delight, and merely turned to the article to get
> the
> > lineup.
> >
> > Cliff's Notes, texts on Shakespeare, even reviews of current films and
> > novels, all contain plot details, with never a spoiler warning in sight.
> > Reviews in newspapers and magazines might OMIT key items and outcomes so
> as
> > not to ruin plot twists, but they never put up spoiler warnings for the
> > details they give away.
> >
> > On my own head be it if I look up a film and find out that the butler
> did
> > it, or that Hamlet dies in the final scene.
> >
> > I have encountered spoiler warnings in online discussion groups about
> > current television series of the opus of an author, but in such groups,
> many
> > participants have not seen or read all the material, and (more to the
> point)
> > a warning is placed so that they don't open or read a post, when they
> might
> > read many others from the same source.
> >
> > What person, I ask, what thinking person is going to go to an article on
> > Harry Potter and the Order of the Boot and be surprised to find plot
> details
> > freely given away? Surely they would expect the plot to be described and
> > would be righteously indignant if we didn't describe it. Are we writing
> an
> > encyclopaedia for cretins?
> >
> > --
> > Peter in Canberra
>
>
> That's not the point. We still have the spoiler information. We just
> provide a convienient template (which you can hide) so that the reader
> can be warned. It is a minor service provide. If it seriously
> sacrifices the integrity of the article (as is apparently the case in
> [[The Crying Game]],) we can choose to omit it, or provide a warning
> for the entire article. I would not be against editing of the
> guidelines to reflect this, but don't simply discard them entirely.


The problem, as I and others have raised, is that defining a spoiler is
extremely difficult to do without violating [[WP:NOR]]. How do we know what
a spoiler is? You may just know it, but your subjective judgment will
obviously differ from others, and without a source we can turn to, there's
no way we can agree on what a spoiler is.

The result is that in many cases, spoiler tags encompass whole sections of
articles, even if not really necessary, simply because someone feels that X
is a spoiler and should be covered. As someone (I think it was Phil
Sandifer?) pointed out, in such a case, we might as well mark the whole
encyclopaedia with spoiler tags because virtually every bit of information
could be an unwanted surprise to someone.

Johnleemk