Spoilers on Character Pages

I've started to notice that spoilers are being unmarked on character pages like Characters.The Legend Of Zelda A Link Between Worlds. Why are they being unmarked?

Because we don't encourage spoiler tags on Characters pages due to rampant abuse.

Plus, character pages go into detail enough that spoilers are to be expected by default.

To be more specific, character pages can have spoiler tags, but people tend to overuse them. When that happens, it's often easier to just remove them outright rather than fight people over it. Be sure to bring it up in discussion before making any major changes (including that) to a page.

To be fair, any page that does not allow spoiler markup (be it a character sheet, episode recap, or one of the Death Tropes) does need to make sure all examples on that page are properly crosswicked, so readers can go through those examples in some place without fear of spoilers.

In fact, I'd say making a thread in Long-Term Projects to address this would probably be a good idea. Should I go for it?

Don't we already have a crosswicking project thread? Just add a post (and maybe an edit to the OP, if it's attached as a header). If we don't have such a thread, then make a general one.

We have one for pages lacking wicks, but 1) it would have to be changed to general, and 2) it looks like it has a backlog of at least six months of unsolved requests to crosswick pages as is. (This is probably more a symptom of LTP being underused than anything else, but I really don't want to add to an existing backlog, especially considering this type of crosswicking already has a backlog of its own.)

Not to get too far off-topic, but part of the problem may be that most people are probably only going to be interested in certain specific LTP threads they'd be good at, and some LTP threads require familiarity with specific works, tropes, or guidelines to take part in. Crosslinking, though, should have none of those issues, especially since it's something we expect tropers to do anyway; the only real problem is that it's tedious and the way an example is described on one type of page doesn't always work on the other type of page, so some familiarity with the work may be needed.

I need a little more clarity when it comes to why spoilers on character pages are abused.

If anything, unmarking spoilers is insensitive.

Because they are abused and we had a series of incidents earlier this year (or last year) about people over-spoilering character pages.

If someone is going to look at a characters page, they should do so in expectation that they will encounter spoilers. This is little different from a recap, Trivia, or any other subpage. The main article is the only place where one should expect things to be tagged consistently.

The alternative is to have characters articles where 90% of the tropes are totally blank, which is grossly offensive.

To actually answer the question ^note Honestly, how is "They are abused" an answer to "why are spoilers abused"?, there are two parts to this. First, some tropers aren't the best judge of what counts as a plot spoiler. This one is a no-brainer, and understandable. Normally, we could work with these people, but...

The second is that character sheets have a higher percentage of spoiler material, due to the fact that a higher percentage of character-based tropes can contain spoilers. So using spoiler markup on character sheets requires more careful handling as is. With people misusing it, it becomes simpler just to get rid of it.

...or at least, it seems that way. My main issue (brought up above and elsewhere) is that spoiler markup is useless if there are examples that are uncovered by it that genuinely need it. If we're committed to not spoiling things for those who don't want it, underuse is just as bad as overuse.

Should we get rid of things like this, too?

^{Click to see Midna's true form} 

I don't think these are that much of a problem.

Hiding images behind note markup isn't a terrible thing. It doesn't mangle information in the same way that spoiler markup does.

If I may, our general opposition to spoiler markup on Character pages (assuming I'm making the right inference) goes all the way back to Characters.Frozen. Some jokers were abusing the spoiler policy simply because they believed that not doing so would reveal the true nature of a certain supporting character. To get that nonsense to stop, it was decreed that all spoiler markup was to be banned forthwith and henceforth from that page.

edited 21st Jul '14 11:19:19 AM by ryanasaurus0077

It's always been an issue; that was merely one of the more egregious cases of misuse.

@Fighteer:

I don't see this "90%" that you're making a big deal of. All of the character pages I've seen are no different from the main trope pages.

If you have Walking Spoiler characters, then you might have 90% blanks. Otherwise not really. There are a lot of pages where treating spoilers on character pages as elsewhere works perfectly fine.

Yeah, not all articles have problems. Which is why only a minority of them is getting spoiler tags outlawed.

But there HAS to be a better way than that, right? Like having a separate spoiler section or folder?

That is an even worse way, given the maintenance it needs to work. Only a few pages with a dedicated curator team can work with that.

Is that different from having a folder for spoiler characters?

It is unreasonable to try to protect someone who comes to a Characters page from any and all foreknowledge of a work's plot. If you're going there, you are by definition seeking out more detailed information than is available on the main article.

The problem with grouping spoilers or spoiler characters together and hiding them is that someone who comes to the article unaware of the way it's been organized may see a "missing" character and/or trope and add it, not realizing that they're tucked away in a special place.

Which really isn't different from reading a long, unorganised list of works for a certain trope and making sure the work you're adding isn't already there. For character tropes it's a little harder, since any single trope can appear many times on different characters, but a single character should only appear once.

"Any and all foreknowledge of a work's plot" is a strawman. That would essentially require spoilering pretty much anything on every single page, no matter if it's a trope, work, or character page.

And "seeking out more information" isn't necessarily the same as "wanting to find out every single secret the series has to offer", which is what's implied if no spoilertags are allowed.