Archived Discussion Administrivia / HandlingSpoilers

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

dkellis: Yah, I'm kind of wondering whether I should leave unspoilered things which are already available in the US, but either were available for all of two weeks, or which are an essential part of the story. (An anime example would be Ryouko Asakura's true nature in Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu: very big surprise, and the DVD it's on was released around the first week of July.) This is mostly a desire to avoid making examples which go "In Series Name, Big Block Of Spoiler Text That Goes For Four Lines".

Fast Eddie: Seems like something is needed to guide use of the tag. I've seen tagged areas of descriptions of Shakespeare's plays, books, movies, and series that have been off the air for twenty years. It Was His Sled talks about how some cats are out of the bag...

Lale: Tag every tv episode less than a week old, every film less than a month old, and everything related to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for awhile.

Seth: I'll mention again that i have problems with this. I just gave up on adding doctor who examples because i have no clue when you guys have seen them. For the most part you see them half a year after we do by the time i can add examples it's far from fresh in my mind so they might get missed.

Also adding that twist endings need spoiler tagging, no matter how old the example is if the work is considered a "must watch" and a reasonable troper is expected to see it. (I avoided reading anything about the princes bride until i saw it). And especially anime, for anime series most people who read the anime sections are usually looking for new series (It's what i did when i was new to anime) and spoiling major plot points (As in the major plot spoilers for souko no strain) is a bit nasty.

I use the measuring stick, "If i were told about this before watching the series, how would i react". And go from there.

dkellis: There's one example from Card Captor Sakura (manga started in Japan 1996, anime started in Japan 1998, whole thing ended in 2000, released in the US by then according to the copyright info on my DV Ds) in the Xanatos Roulette entry which isn't essential to the plot, isn't really a twist, but provides justification for a certain character which makes one go "oh, that's what it's all about" and might change perceptions of the series right from the beginning. To clarify: it's possible to go through the entire series without realizing this spoiler, but it's like a couple of steps up from Epileptic Trees in that it fits perfectly and makes absolute sense of one knows it. Except that it'll change perceptions in the same way a more standard spoiler does.

Things like that are what I'm afraid of spoiling. Need to come up with a better example...

Scientivore: Here's something about spoilers that has nothing to do with spoiler tags. When I link to a webcomic, I almost always link to its first strip, unless it's a gag-a-day comic like Penny Arcade. Most webcomics have the latest strip right there on the front page, which can give spoilers for a story comic. It's even worse than choosing a scene at random for a movie trailer, because the front page gets more and more spoiler potential as time goes on.

dkellis: Also, video games, since they rely not just on availability and free time to go through it, but also individual player skill, in order to be able to get through the game to see whatever can be spoiled. I've known some people who actually did not know the fate of Aerith in Final Fantasy VII even this year, ten years after the game was released. (One of them reacted... poorly to being spoiled.) Someone might simply be unable to play the game far enough to see the Big Twist in Jade Empire, for instance.

Actually, bringing up Jade Empire reminded me of another question I had: when making a program listing page, how should we deal with including tropes that are major spoilers just by their existence on that page?

Tanto: There are some tropes, however, which are going to be spoilers just by their very nature (see Treacherous Advisor and He's Just Hiding). I don't think it's advisable to spoilerize every example in those entries, just put a warning at the top and let people make their own decisions.

Fast Eddie: Generalizing and drafting a synthesis so far:

• Material that might spoil the surprise of a story can be white-fonted. Links to external stuff (webcomix, excerpts, clips) shouldn't go straight to the surprise without a warning.
• If the trope is about surprises, a general disclaimer (Here be spoilers!) at the top should warn off the wary. Use this to avoided white-fonted articles.
• Qualified disclaimers are also possible: Might spoil outside North America!, Spoilers for Season 2 Tru Calling!.

Robin Goodfellow: So far so good. I've said this elsewhere already, but I'm in favor of anything that minimizes the use of spoiler tags. This site is of little value if you can't read great chunks of it. I really want to urge restraint, something like this:

• Before putting text in a spolier tag, stop and consider how essential it really is, and decide whether it can be worded in a way that doesn't give key details away, and if it can't, maybe it should just be left out. If it's really needed, it's probably going into a surprise-oriented trope, which can be so noted and caveat emptor applies; otherwise, there's a good chance the spoiler details are not needed.

Fast Eddie: In that spirit, one way or the other, the main text of an article above examples should not contain white-font. If it's a secret, it probably not a "convention alive in the minds of the audience". If the trope is about secrets/surprises, then the open disclaimer should serve.

Morgan Wick: On Seth's complaint on inability to add Who examples: Aren't we still using Doctor Who New Series Tropes? Edit: We seem to be transitioning to spoiler-tagging everything until it's aired in the US. To err on the side of caution, I would spoiler everything related to the new series and let the Wiki Magic on the leftpond side do the trick. Wikipedia says Sci Fi has aired all of Series 1 and 2 and has started on Series 3. http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/ might be used as a rough guide, assuming everything up to but not including the "next episode" has aired. American fansites might also help in determining which episodes have aired stateside.

Ununnilium: As of August 9th, 2007, they've aired everything through "Daleks in Manhattan".

Fast Eddie: Very cool, Tanto. Tone and content all seem just right. Kudos!

• Connor, son of the vampire Angel and the vampire Darla, from the Buffy The Vampire Slayer spin-off TV series Angel. Child of two vampires (who supposedly cannot bear children) Connor was abducted as a baby and raised in a Hell Dimension by a fanatical demon hunter. When Connor returned to Earth as a teenager, he was a ruthless and feral fighter, with superhuman combat abilities similar to those of a Slayer (although he was male). When Connor was made to believe that his aging foster father had been murdererd by vampires, he went berserk. Even after Connor had been persuaded that Angel was on the side of Good, the boy never fit in on Earth. At the end of the series' 4th season, Angel struck a deal with the evil demon law firm Wolfram & Hart, asking them to alter the memories of Connor and Angel's friends, wiping out all memory of Connor's real past and superhuman combat abilities and constructing an elaborate web of fake memories, complete with a human foster family for Connor, allowing Angel's son to live a normal teenager's life. Until a demon from Angel's and Connor's past turned up and tried to kill Connor.

• Connor, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The son of two vampires, he was abducted as a baby and raised in a Hell Dimension by a fanatical demon hunter, eventually returning to Earth as a teenager. His memories are later replaced with an elaborate web of fake ones, allowing him to live an ordinary teenage life... until a demon tied to his past comes looking for him...

• You know, it doesn't matter if you won't spoil The Mousetrap. Wikipedia spoils The Mousetrap. (Or at least they used to. You may have to scan back through the history to find it.) ~ So It Begins