Policy Question: Spoiler tagging Trope Names on character pages

Because that would be a nightmare of organization. Characters articles are inherently spoiler-laden and there is no way around it.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Recently i was thinking, if (as the "handling spoilers" page says), tagging the name of the work is more than useless, can we apply this to episode/chapter names? I think that

Killed Off for Real : At the end of the second season.

is more spoiler-ish than

Killed Off for Real : At the end of the second reason.

TL;DR: spoiler tag trope names, not episode/chapter/act/scene name, but description of the scenes can be tagged if they are important.

edited 6th Feb '14 9:36:05 AM by dreamofwritting

No, because spoiler-tagging the trope name makes listing it completely useless.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

(For people who avoid spoilers.)

Check out my fanfiction!

And for the people who don't avoid spoilers, this whole discussion is moot.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Makes it useless in what way? Can you elaborate?

Because you can't identify the trope. Unless you ignore the spoiler tag, but then there is no need for the spoiler tag.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Useless in that is a SelfFulfillingSpoiler, that is, with absolutely no context, how am i sure i can see the text without being spoiled?

edited 6th Feb '14 10:57:26 AM by dreamofwritting

UH ... I can barely read that.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

There's a bigger problem with this example than what to spoil

Is a Zero Context Example, making it bad to begin with.

edited 6th Feb '14 6:57:29 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

On a character page it would just squeak by; it at least identifies when it happened which is some context. Better would be if it also identified how and/or by who, or in which arc.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Slight modification: We've said before that "when" is insufficient to establish context. Killed Off for Real, to borrow the example under consideration, would need some description of how the character dies, so that we can be certain the trope actually applies.

Other important context: Is Character Death a common thing in the 'verse in question? Can characters come Back from the Dead? Are Only Mostly Dead or Never Found the Body commonplace tropes? Killed Off for Real requires at a minimum establishing the fact that the death in question is atypical for its finality.

edited 6th Feb '14 3:34:00 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I stand corrected on "when" not being enough.

But all of those questions in your last paragraph should already be answered elaewhere on the page, or on the main page for the work. It should not be necessary to recap them in the Killed Off for Real entry on a character sheet.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

It is necessary to prove it is an example of the trope.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

If Killed Off for Real wasn't consistently misused, then yeah, doing a whole death recap would be (heh) overkill. But it is consistently misused as Character Death, so we need a bit more context to make sure it's right.

For a trope like Killed Off for Real, I'm not sure it's possible to have it on the character page as a complete example without spoilers.

To have that on the work page means you can spoilertag the names and possibly some context (if it's otherwise guessable) to hide who it's about.

And I still maintain that leaving just the time it happens makes it a useful example, since that means you can read it once you've gotten to that point, even if you do care about spoilers.

Thing is, if you care about spoilers, you don't want to read about that trope anyway, so I don't see the problem with hiding it behind spoiler tags. If the discussion is moot for people who don't care about spoilers, then there's absolutely no problem for them to hide whole examples behind spoiler tags.

Check out my fanfiction!

For people who don't care about spoilers, tho', I have to wonder how useful Killed Off for Real: X in Y is.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

That's a matter of Zero Context Example, not about spoiler tagging, though.

Check out my fanfiction!

Which means that such an example is unsuitable regardless of spoilerage.

Also, I have to wonder how many people would find a completely spoilered example suitable vs. finding it an eyesore.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Let's see... "Finding the page looking ugly," versus, "Potentially having the entire work ruined or not being allowed to even look at the page." I think "being an eyesore" is a bit petty in comparison.

edited 7th Feb '14 6:38:53 AM by AnotherDuck

Check out my fanfiction!

Well, sure, if you consider "no spoiler tag vs spoiler tag" the only choice here. What about "no example vs example"? For reference, complaints about spoiler tag overusage happen fairly frequently.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Nope. We want readable articles first and foremost. This wiki deals in tropes. By their very nature, tropes can be spoilers. So you always, always read at your own risk. Spoiler tags are provided so that people can be courteous in terms of the most blatant items, but if it is impossible to write about a character without redacting half of your text, it is worse than useless to us.

I just updated Handling Spoilers to clarify this.

edited 7th Feb '14 6:44:09 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Wait, if you want "readable articles", then "read at your own risk" is a direct antithesis to that.

More accurately, you're saying, "We want readable articles only for the tropers who don't care about spoilers." If they care about spoilers, then you're flat out telling them not to read it.

edited 7th Feb '14 7:00:22 AM by KingZeal

Please don't strawman the policy. This is acceptable use of spoiler text:

• The Starscream: In the climactic battle, Alice attempts to take over the evil plan from Bob, causing it to fail.

These are not:

• The Starscream: In the climactic battle, Alice attempts to take over the evil plan from Bob, causing it to fail.
• The Starscream: In the climactic battle, Alice attempts to take over the evil plan from Bob, causing it to fail.
• The Starscream: In the climactic battle, Alice attempts to take over the evil plan from Bob, causing it to fail.

If what you want is absolute no spoilers about anything, ever, then you should not be reading this wiki.

Edit: At this point, Eddie is inches away from disabling spoiler tags entirely. I told him that we should try doing it on Characters pages first.

edited 7th Feb '14 7:03:37 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

How is that strawmanning, exactly?

If you want the wiki to be readable, then "read at your own risk" is flatly telling people not to read if they don't want to be spoiled. You just said it.

How am I strawmanning?

edited 7th Feb '14 7:14:06 AM by KingZeal