On Nov 17, 2007 3:46 AM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/11/2007, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
I'm glad you asked. Among the arguments *in all sincerity* advanced by advocates of spoiler warnings:
- Returning spoiler warnings to all plot sections, because it is non-
obvious that plot sections contain spoilers
Ok, this argument is clearly bad.
It *isn't* obvious that plot sections contain spoilers. A spoiler is not "any plot element". It's entirely possible for a plot section to contain no spoilers at all.
That would generally make for an inadequate plot section.
True, it would generally (*) make for an inadequate plot section, however that view is neither obvious nor even held by all people.
I disagree with Ken's other two points. I don't think the calendar analogy is at all valid; and I don't think spoiler warnings should ever be placed anywhere other than at the top because determining by consensus where the spoilers begin and end would be far too difficult for the benefit. But I think it's reasonable to believe that a significant portion of people would find benefit to a prominent notice that Wikipedia makes no attempt to hide or remove spoilers; and I don't think there would be any real harm at all to having the notice, except maybe to the egos of some who have been fighting against spoiler tags. Of course, it looks like we're working toward that. The {{current fiction}} tag says that the article might "focus primarily on details about the plot". Isn't that enough to warn people not to read the article if they don't want to hear the spoilers?
(*) Actually, I'd say it'd only occasionally make for an inadequate plot section. For most fictional works it's probably sufficient for an encyclopedia to talk about the social aspects of the work without going into plot details. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find spoilers in many Britannica articles (someone with a copy should confirm or deny this). However, Wikipedia precedent is very inclusive of details and it'd be even harder to remove those excessive details than to remove the spoiler tags.