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

[Steve Bennett]

On 5/22/07, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

Your argument is fallacious. It goes something like this:
1) An article about the book must contain spoilers.
2) A thinking person knows that it must contain spoilers.
3) A person who reads the article and is "spoilt" is therefore a cretin.

It's wrong because a person could rightly believe that the article
will contain spoilers *with a warning*. Or that it will be possible to
read an article *without reading the spoilers*.

Why should I not be able to read about a Harry Potter bock without
having the ending spoilt? Maybe I'd like to know the basic plot
outline, without knowing whether or not Harry dies at the end?* How is
that unreasonable or cretinous?

Steve

* I don't know whether Harry dies at the end. So if you do, keep it to yourself.