On 5/23/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/22/07, Skyring skyring@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:
- An article about the book must contain spoilers.
- A thinking person knows that it must contain spoilers.
- 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*.
A person who believes that encyclopaedia articles will contain spoiler warnings is, if not a cretin, woefully optimistic. This may be easily demonstrated at any library.