[WikiEN-l] Reflections on the end of the spoiler wars

[Ken Arromdee]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007, David Gerard wrote:
> > If the whole thing was limited to removing spoiler warnings from nursery
> > rhymes, I wouldn't complain.  The typical article with a spoiler warning
> > removed is not about a nursery rhyme, and you have to know this.
> No, the *typical* spoiler warning was one that warned that the ==Plot
> summary== might reveal important details about the plot.

I've repeatedly covered several reasons why spoiler warnings do belong in
plot sections:

-- a consistent user interface would imply not removing the warning just
because the user can figure it out; I compared it to a calendar which
names every day of the week even though it's mostly redundant.  "Let me get
this straight, you have to *label* the day after Sunday as being Monday?
Wouldn't anyone over the age of 6 already know that?"
-- the warning is usually meaningful anyway--because not every plot summary
reveals spoilers.  It reveals details, but not all details are spoilers.
-- the spoiler warning can be placed somewhere other than at the top to
tell the reader *where* in the plot synopsis the spoiler is; the user cannot
get that information from the name "plot summary".

Needless to say, none of this has anything to do with nursery rhymes.  Only a
small minority of spoiler warnings were on nursery rhymes.  Plot sections are
not just like nursery rhymes, and using nursery rhymes as an example when you
really mean there are spoilers on plot sections is highly misleading.