Different levels of spoilers?

One might make the argument that just knowing someone sells his soul is a fairly large spoiler on its own.

Pretty much this.

It's a key character event that changes the entire story on its own. That should be spoilered no matter what.

It was not obvious either that one would take the deal. It should be fully spoilered if there was no guarantee the person would take it. If a character doesn't even make a qualm about it, as in they take it right away, and is has little effect other than "Okay, I got more power", it's not spoiler worthy. But if it changes how the character completely acts, is key to the story, then it should be spoilered. I see no reason to tell everyone that. The only reason it wouldn't be spoiler-worthy is if it was ONLY a part of someone's backstory, and that's also questionable.

Absolutely disagree with you. Who it happens to is all should definitely be tagged. Possibly the second sentence. Tagging the entire example is bad form*

edited 28th Dec '11 9:52:57 PM by Wulf

That's not what they mean. It means you don't spoiler the actual trope itself. You spoiler the key parts, which is actually who does it and why. That's the spoiler-worthy part.

And it's partially a case-by-case basis. A villain who takes it as their Start of Darkness may be spoiler worthy depending the entire context. If they tell it in a tale way late into the story, it should be spoilered. If we see that in a flashback in the first episode, there's nothing worth spoilering about it. We know it happens. It's clear as day. The only way it could be spoiler worthy is if the villain did not take it without hesitation.

Oh hey, they changed the name of our spoiler policy page... Used to be Our Super Strict Spoiler Policy

If I'm understanding you correctly, I agree. That's why I said go with the second version.

If I'm misunderstanding you, the policy's pretty clear. Don't tag entire examples, err on the side of more information.

Tagging an entire example is tagging the trope itself. You still tag any spoilerriffic parts. This is "why" and "who", not what. The person and their reason would always be spoilered if any needs to be spoilered.

No. Tagging an entire example is exactly what it sounds like, listing Deal with the Devil, with the entire rest of it being in spoilers. Note that the first example on Handling Spoilers is "An example that reads something like this...Eddard Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire. Despite being one of the few truly good characters of the series, his rigid code of honour and loyalty to his dead friend lead to his downfall....is virtually useless." The same applies to what I've been talking about.

What you're talking about is actually policy now— for specific tropes (The Hero Dies comes to mind) which are always major spoilers*

edited 28th Dec '11 10:28:04 PM by Wulf

My point still stands. Also, that's exactly what I was talking about doing. The reasons and the characters are what should be spoilered.

We have yet to figure out the best option for The Hero Dies anyway. Unless I missed that somewhere.

I think the thread about those sort of things kinda fizzled out.

And like I said, I wasn't sure I was understanding you correctly. Turns out I was. That's all I've been trying to communicate for the last hour or so. =P. Way too many examples are of the first variety, listing nothing but "Hey, this trope happens" with no context, which is wrong. Only the character name, possibly the reasons, and possibly the effects of it should ever be tagged.

edited 28th Dec '11 10:50:58 PM by Wulf

Which should be spoilered, if the trope is spoiler-based. It'll say so on the trope itself.

Mind you, character changing events should be spoiler-worthy at first, but reasons may change that. It depends the context, of course. I do not think there are "different levels of spoilers". They're spoiler-worthy, or they're not.

If an example is so covered in white-out that you have to highlight it to figure out whether or not you already know it, or if every word is whited out, then it is useless. At the very least, what chapter, episode, or book it happens in should be plain so that a reader can decide whether or not they want to highlight the rest.

However, it's best to phrase examples so that you need to white-out only very little. And if it can't be worded that way, maybe it shouldn't be listed as an example at all. I have refrained from adding some examples to pages because I could find no way to word it that didn't require whiting-out nearly the whole thing, and such an example is pointless.

Certain tropes get around this by being spoilers off tropes (Death Tropes) and some works get around it by being quite old (like The Iliad). On a works page that is more recent, you can do something like this:

Heroic Sacrifice — At the end of episode 26, the Lancer Bob dies saving Alice from the Slime Creatures, so that she can reach the Temple of George before the Crystal of Plot Relevance explodes.

If you haven't seen episode 26 and don't want to be spoilered, you know not to highlight that. If the entire thing was whited out, you couldn't figure out whether it was something you already knew.

If you just want to spoil out a name, there are ways to disguise how long that name is. For example, prefix it (inside the spoiler tags) with a relevant character trope (like Bob above), or use their seldom-seen full name

edited 29th Dec '11 7:55:14 PM by ArcadesSabboth

We're not supposed to blot out tropes along with the corresponding spoiler, but there are certain plot twists where the trope itself is a spoiler, especially when posted on a Character page. Including a death, romance, or betrayal trope on a Character page alongside a spoiler is itself a spoiler. At least on the main page, such a trope only reveals THAT some such thing happens, not to whom it happens, but even on the main page, such an item can be a spoiler if the drama hinged around Will They or Won't They? or Like You Would Really Do It.

One thing that mitigates the point about if a trope is in the list, it's a spoiler just by being there, is that tropes can be subverted or averted. Or play around with it. Especially tropes that are spoilered.

As for things that happen in other works or in later parts of the same series (that aren't the subject of the page), those kind of spoilers should be avoided if at all possible. There's very rarely a need to bring in information from other places in the first place.

And on the work's main page, that makes sense, but on a Character page, there's an overwhelming tendency to place such items only if the trope is played straight.

Too bad, so sad, don't read a Characters page if you don't want spoilers?

It is helpful to note at the top of the Character page that it has spoilers unmarked. That's the best thing to do, as a warning. If somebody doesn't follow that warning, then it's their own fault at that point. It's the most kind thing we can do to help them avoid spoilers.

Spoiler marking an entire entry is pointless. If you have spoilers left off(meaning they are blanked out on the page), it means you see a majorly blank spot. More than enough people are curious on what it is... then read it, and poof, find out something they didn't want to know. Thus, it makes it hard to deal with them. It's why spoilering names works on many pages, but it doesn't work on Character Sheets. You have to spoiler the entry at best, and that's assuming the trope isn't blatantly obvious, like "The Hero", if it was not meant to be made clear right away.

Basically, Character Sheets are designed so each trope goes under a character. Not a lot of characters can be listed under a trope. It's easy with the other way around to spoiler mark a major thing. It's near impossible on a character page as many tropes have spoilerworthy names for them. That's why we note that the character page has a ton of spoilers, and why we also unmark them to make it far easier. There's rarely a point when the character sheet would work better with spoiler markings. If it's a non-obvious trope and you don't need to spoiler the entry, sure. But this is rare enough that we're nearly at the point where disabling all spoilers on the Character page is better(and of course, putting up a nice big Warning at top that there will be spoilers is absolutely necessary), but it seems like there's enough moments where you can spoiler mark something without it being a problem to make this unnecessary.