Tropes are not adequately spoiler-tagged

I'd go on numerous pages around the wiki, and I'd notice how the details concerning a spoiler - i.e. why the trope is applicable - are covered up. But not the actual trope itself.

Below is an example of what I'm talking about, through the use of a widely known work.

If I were to list tropes under Darth Vader for Star Wars, and I wanted to list Luke, I Am Your Father without spoiling, I would list the trope as follows:

• Luke, I Am Your Father: Darth Vader reveals to Luke on Bespin that he is an alter ego of Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father.

Instead, a lot of tropers do the following:

• Luke, I Am Your Father: Darth Vader reveals to Luke on Bespin that he is an alter ego of Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father.

The meat of the spoiler is in the very fact the trope is listed at all, regardless of the details.

I've seen this problem all over TV Tropes, and not just in isolated incidents. I'd like a Wiki cleanup, if possible, as well as increased awareness of this problem.

That's the way it should be. Spoiler marking the trope names are not allowed, and we are working on removing those spoiler markings.

We don't really want the whole context spoiler marked either.

Frankly, it should probably look like this:

• Luke, I Am Your Father: Darth Vader reveals to Luke on Bespin that he is an alter ego of Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father.

or possibly:

• Luke, I Am Your Father: Darth Vader reveals to Luke on Bespin that he is an alter ego of Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father.

edited 31st Aug '14 5:59:06 AM by m8e

What if it were on the character page, and not the main page, for a given work?

Makes no difference.

See Policy Question: Spoiler tagging Trope Names on character pages thread.

edited 31st Aug '14 6:02:19 AM by m8e

Yep, this is a no exceptions rule. Spoiler tags don't belong over trope names or work names. Never ever.

In honest terms I agree with the OP. This policy makes no sense because a trope like Dying Moment of Awesome is a spoiler by itself, and while you may hide the detaisl, you have nonetheless spoiled someone about that character dying (to say nothing of Downer Ending). Not spoiling the trope name would mean we would need to put a spoiler warning on every single page we have ever created.

Well, you can also leave the trope off if it's that much of a spoiler.

In which case we would not be doing our jobs as tropers (which would also screw up that trope's crosswicking severely if we simply stop mentioning Downer Ending). It's a headache no matter the way you slice it.

While I agree, policy does still not allow spoilering work or trope names.

Also, a Downer Ending in a horror story is not much of a spoiler, so that's one opportunity of crosswicking.

Spoiler tags defeat clarity. Clarity is the most important goal of the wiki.

In which case we should disregard spoiler tags altogether, as they make the description less clear.

There is something called moderation.

^^ Clarity may be the most important consideration but it does not automatically trump everything else. That is exaggerating what Fighteer said.

Same with the conflicting goals of "our job" of documenting tropes, and not spoiling everything. Sometimes not giving away a big spoiler is more important, and the best answer is not recording the trope at all.

At first I read what Another Duck said as "something moderators do" and didn't get it, but re-reading I see I that is not correct and I understand: it is similar to what I mean, "moderation" as in "restraint". The options are not only two, at the extreme ends, being completely clear versus using spoiler markup at all... there are many points in between. The right course of action is often nuanced.

edited 31st Aug '14 7:05:59 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I just can't see how avoiding to list a spoilerific trope is at all a better approach than simply hiding it. It's like trying to fight a cancer by shooting the patient in the face rather than targeting the actual disease.

The idea is that if you have to highlight it to see if you want to read it, there was no point in putting it in spoiler tags. Then again, spoiler policy is violated all over the place in other areas: for example, I see unnecessary spoilers a lot (like stuff tacked onto the end of an entry that is irrelevant to the trope), and entries are supposed to be readable / make sense without the spoiler text (and often they are not)... dunno.

Maybe Character pages should all be "spoilers off"?

Character pages differ too much for a blanket policy on that, I think. Not all series are spoiler heavy.

Some character pages are already spoilers off.

There's also the option to make a page spoilers off up until the most recent season/book. That only works on more linear series, though, but it's pretty useful for mysteries and such where pretty much everything is a spoiler, and there's just no way to discuss even the barest details of later installments without completely giving away every major twist from previous ones.

That's what we did with Characters.The Dresden Files. Since it's pretty much just the one line of books in chronological order, the day before the most recent book came out I used that spoiler tool to remove tags from every single page, then put a note stating only spoilers from the most recent book were marked. When the next book comes out in about a year, we'll do it again.

On the other hand, that doesn't work for Characters.A Certain Magical Index, which is a shared universe consisting of a light novel series, an anime of the light novel, a manga of the light novel, a spin-off manga, another spin-off manga, and several minor video games, all of which are at different points in the story.

edited 1st Sep '14 8:02:06 AM by Discar

If a trope would be that big a spoiler on a characters page, then put it on the main work page instead. For example, tropes such as Big Bad or Man Behind the Man can be major spoilers when on a characters page, but on the main work page they would be a lot less of a spoiler.

Besides, sometimes it's possible to guess the name of a trope just by where it is placed, so even covering the trope name with a spoiler tag does not work (I think that contributed to the "do not spoiler tag trope names" rule).

There would be much less problems with 'spoiler tropes' if the Characters/ pages were limited to the purpose they were made for: to collect character tropes. But what tropers do is to add tropes about every development in a show that is tangentially related to the character to that character's trope list. Of course you are going to be completely spoiled if you read that list. That's what tropers want.

But this practice is completely pointless. Tropes relating to the plot (like Luke, I Am Your Father) belong in the works' general trope list, and shouldn't go on the characters subpage to begin with. Listing them on Characters/ too is just a redundant duplication. In fact, they may be duplicated several times, because obviously several characters can be involved in one and the same event in the show.

edited 1st Sep '14 10:00:59 AM by LordGro

The majority of character sheets were not made for that purpose, but to just be a reference guide to the characters. And if you want to go far enough back in our history, that's the original function of that namespace. Some tropers got the idea to just list tropes to go with each character, and that's how those pages came to include examples. Using those pages as extensions of example lists came later, as a way to try and deal with page length issues.

I've mentioned before that the dual usage of character sheets is a problem, but the fact is that we never really had a choice about using them for reference purposes. Pretty much everywhere you go on the internet, and even in quite a few paper publications, that's the expected standard for having a character sheet related to a fictional work. It was the standard long before TV Tropes was a twinkle in the eyes of a certain group of Buffy fans, and it will likely remain the standard for decades to come.

As long as we choose to use character sheets as extensions of the example lists, we will have issues with spoilers and such. Assuming we aren't going to change any policies in response to this, the only solution is a crosswicking push for the relevant pages and their examples. And we can't wait too long to do it, or the problem will become too entrenched to solve by any method other than killing spoiler markup.

Character pages I can more or less understand due the policy mentioned by Discar (i.e putting a disclaimer that it'll be full of spoilers barring the most recent story), but I feel doing the same to main trope pages would sort of kill the point of the wiki, and not doing the same and just not adding the tropes goes against the explicit purpose of this site.

A great way to get past this rule is by putting up what I like to call Red Herring Tropes. If a character established as a good guy before hand turns out to be evil, just put down the tropes the audience expects, but hide the actual tropes for the character inside the spoilered content. I mean, look at Felix from Red Vs Blue: his sheet had a dozen unmarked spoiler tropes, so I changed them around so that they don't give away a major plot twist.

"The idea is that if you have to highlight it to see if you want to read it, there was no point in putting it in spoiler tags. Then again, spoiler policy is violated all over the place in other areas: for example, I see unnecessary spoilers a lot (like stuff tacked onto the end of an entry that is irrelevant to the trope), and entries are supposed to be readable / make sense without the spoiler text (and often they are not)... dunno."

If a person has seen or read the subject in question, they will highlight the spoiler anyway.

If a person has not yet seen or read the subject in question, they can choose to read the spoiler, or they can avoid the spoiler and just read the character page or main page as an overview of the series they want to get into.

I suppose you could simply not bother with using spoilers on character pages, and if it's not a well-known work (honestly, Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings doesn't have many spoilers), there wouldn't be a problem. Even if the character page is for a less renown work, a spoiler warning in bold could be placed on top of the character page.

That still doesn't change the problem of the main page of the work itself, which provides an overview of the entire series. Many tropers have been introduced to works through the main page. If you won't hide certain tropes (such as death tropes), you might as well not use spoiler tags. At all.

Honestly, such "no exceptions" rules regarding whether or not tropes are spoiler-tagged comes across as arbitrary. Besides, it's hypocritical for TV Tropes to have such rigid policies considering how it sets itself apart from places like Wikipedia by being more "casual". Perhaps its all just a phony charade and that this wiki is just as anal as some other wikis on the net.

Can we please leave Troper's Law out of it?

Also, worth noting, this site is primarily for tropes. The default assumption (and expectation) is that folks are here for the trope list, which is why the spoiler tag over the trope name is problematic.