Policy Question: Spoiler tagging Trope Names on character pages

I meant exactly what I said. Readable does not mean "won't be spoiled". It means "doesn't have huge blocks of white everywhere".

In my mind, removing spoiler tags altogether is not a good idea. I think it's more trouble than worth, especially on mainwiki pages.

On character pages, I am more receptive. For one thing, spoiler misusage is more widespread and more problematic there. On the other hand, there are arguments that spoilery tropes - a big source of spoiler tagging problems - don't belong there since they are more about plot than characters.

Moving plot tropes to the main article is a good solution, as long as those tropes still obey the policy in terms of how they are formatted. The problem on Characters/ pages is that they are grouped with the character, which is an automatic spoiler.

Keep the ideas coming.

edited 7th Feb '14 7:23:17 AM by Fighteer

So do you mean "readable" as in "able to be read" or "pleasing to read"? Because this seems like a case where the problem is mutually exclusive.

That sounds like a slippery slope. What happens when a huge character revelation happens? Do all subsequent tropes go into the plot page, then? For example, Miles Morales of Ultimate Spiderman is a Walking Spoiler. Likewise, Durkon of The Order of the Stick after he dies and is vampirized. Do all subsequent tropes involving those characters go exclusively into the main index?

edited 7th Feb '14 7:25:45 AM by KingZeal

Spoiler-tags are neither "pleasing" nor "easy to read". I think you are talking about personal convenience, which is nowhere stated as a goal of the wiki.

Forgive me, but that seems rather subjective. I understand that this is your policy, and "your" (meaning Eddie's) wiki, but keep in mind we're a small minority deciding what's pleasant for a large majority.

Frankly, I have to question whether a character being vampirized is a spoiler. And even if it were, you can spoiler tag a character name on the main page.

For issues like Durkon (and serial works in general), there is no point in spoiler-tagging things past the point where a reader/viewer who is reasonably current in the series could be expected to have had the opportunity to experience them.

You can't write from the perspective of someone who has never watched/read it, because then everything after the first ten pages could be considered a spoiler.

Only major plot twists should be spoiler tagged.

edited 7th Feb '14 7:35:31 AM by Fighteer

That last sentence, combined with , again backs up my statement of just how subjective this is.

Durkon becoming a vampire is a spoiler for several reasons, not the least of which is a prophecy stated early on that says he will only return to his homeland "posthumously". Like any good plot twist, the fact that that he's now undead completely changes what the prophecy was assumed to mean.

edited 7th Feb '14 7:43:51 AM by KingZeal

And yet, our spoiler policy says you can't spoiler-tag the trope name or the entire example. So you either declare the Characters subpage to contain unmarked spoilers or you find a way to move the relevant tropes elsewhere.

Subjective is not always bad. Plus, a prophecy in my mind makes it only less of a spoiler, not more.

Also, a reader new to the series will probably look at the main article first. If we establish that subpages may contain unmarked spoilers, then any person curious enough about the series to look at its tropes will be forewarned not to leave the main article if they want to avoid them. It's really that simple.

In fact, the more I think about it, the better I like this rule. Main articles get spoiler tags, subpages don't.

edited 7th Feb '14 7:47:46 AM by Fighteer

So "readable" really does mean "pretty".

I think getting turned into a vampire, unless it's easily undoable, would qualify as a fairly big change in plot. Or for one character, at any rate.

Anyway, if just mentioning the trope under a character is a spoiler by itself, I think moving the trope to the main work page is a good solution. Otherwise, if you leave it visible, it makes the entire character page worse than useless for people who care about spoilers. Or, if you leave them hidden, it makes the example worse than useless for whatever people Fighteer represents (mods?).

In all honesty, this new rule sounds like an unsustainable nightmare waiting to happen. But, I have nothing new to argue at this point.

Read our mission statement on the Home Page. Nowhere does it say "not being spoiled" as a goal for the site.

That said, we want to be sensitive about this, but the markup is undeniably abused. Is the solution to ban everyone who does so? Lock every article?

What specifically is the problem, aside from "looks ugly", though?

Not being spoilered may not be implicitly part of the wiki's mission, but it's inherently assumed that "drawing traffic", "encouraging participation", and "easy and comfortable use" are unspoken goals toward the "big" mission.

Not looking ugly is also part of "Having much traffic". There have been plenty of complaints about pages becoming unsightly spoiler-tag-seas.

Question: At the moment spoiler tags default to hidden but you can sign in and choose whether they can be hidden or visible. Would it be possible to reverse that so that they would default to viable and then when you sign in then you could choose to hide them.

I know. I'm saying "aside from that", because it's a pretty clear concern. However, complaining about something and not using it are two different things.

For example, I hate having to click on "Workshops" every time I want to look at the forums, but I do it even though I complain. What you want to worry about are the people who aren't complaining but don't use the site.

edited 7th Feb '14 8:12:07 AM by KingZeal

Nah, because then you get people walking into spoilers that they had no way of knowing were there in advance. Better to have the markup on by default (and make people log in to turn it off) than to have it off and make them turn it on.

You haven't offered an alternative, King Zeal. Like many other things in the wiki's past: I Am Not Making This Up, This Troper, color markup, and so forth, spoiler tags are massively overused. Allowing them to continue this way is not viable.

edited 7th Feb '14 8:13:39 AM by Fighteer

I don't think there is any quick solution to this. Much like using indentations wrong, it's probably best to just lead by example. Rewrite examples where they're messy and hope people notice the pattern.

The difference with those is that there's no switch you can flip to turn them off. There is for spoiler tags, though.

edited 7th Feb '14 8:19:43 AM by AnotherDuck

Making people stop using poor bullet point usage is much easier than doing so with spoiler tags. The procedure is much more cut and dry.

So far, I think the solutions offered are worse than the problem. Asking me to offer a better solution doesn't change my opinion that what you're seeking to do causes more problems than it solves.

Okay.

Personally I have always thought that seeing a someone on a character page with almost their entire entry spoilered is more of a spoiler than having them visible as it makes it obvious that that character does something very important. My own preference would be to keep all spoilers in their own folder on the page or to give them a page to themselves but that has already been discussed.

Well, if people would learn how to write around spoilers rather than just splash them into the examples, we wouldn't have as much of an issue. That's asking a lot of them, though.

Putting highly spoileriffic characters into folders is a compromise that's been advanced and I even put it in the Handling Spoilers policy page just now.

Putting spoiler tropes into a separate folder on main articles isn't acceptable, though, because a troper has no way of knowing that they are there without looking for them, and that defeats the purpose of organizing tropes. All you'll get then is a lot of people adding duplicate entries.

If you read the examples section of a work article, you are going to get spoiled to a certain extent. That is quite simply unavoidable.

edited 7th Feb '14 9:06:31 AM by Fighteer