My opinion on "ItWasHisSled"-esque spoilers

And the very few times — I recall only one, actually: whether to keep Troper Tales— that was done, it was the Admin saying "OK, you vote on the way you want this done", not tropers saying "Ok, we'll vote and that'll be the way it's done." That's a fundamental difference.

To be fair, most site politics are based on a quiet minority vote anyway, and if you could fix that you would fix democracy forever. Even if people visiting the site were redirected to a page proclaiming "WE ARE VOTING CLICK HERE TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOU SAW THIS" you'd still have people complaining they had no idea what was going on and nobody bothered to tell them.

Were there any new developments on a better way of making announcements with the revamp? Prior to making sweeping changes via a vote?

edited 1st Mar '15 8:31:45 PM by Rotpar

Expanding the visibility of the headline feature might be something. But that's discussion for another thread.

i think spoilers on character pages are often annoying and/or pointless, but not always. i dont see why there should be a hardline "no spoilers on character pages ever" rule when it works fine on some pages.

why not make spoilers optional on character pages, or make it easier to remove them? That seems to be where they get removed the most anyway

by the way, the new "spoiler-toggle" button is great. good job!

edited 3rd Mar '15 4:25:52 AM by PistolsAtDawn

My 2 cents. I'm fine with hiding spoilers on character pages. Pages I view tend to not be bad about it. The spoiler heavy ones are usually because the character in question is a walking spoiler. I find it kinda irritating that the rules say you can never spoiler out a trope name, though. I also find it irritating that the rules don't actually address anything other than the works page. It doesn't address character pages, YMMV, etc in its current wording.

There also oughta be rules in place for how to fix misplaced spoiler tags. Earlier I found a spoiler tag that was placed as [Trope spoiler:[. In my ignorance, I fixed it to cover the trope name. Then someone came along, and instead of moving the spoiler tag over to conform to the rules, removed the entire tag for 2 tropes.

edited 4th Mar '15 1:47:23 PM by Skyte100

Character pages and YMMV pages are sub-pages to the main work page.

No one was ever arguing anything different.

Look again: "I also find it irritating that the rules don't actually address anything other than the works page. It doesn't address character pages, YMMV, etc in its current wording."

~Skyte100 is not describing those pages to be sub-pages of a work, they're describing those pages as if different rules are meant to apply. The current wording addresses character pages, YMMV, etc because those pages are subpages to the work page.

I don't care if someone tells me that Snape kills Dumbledore, or Bruce Willis is a ghost. I haven't read/seen either work, but even if I planned to, Memetic Mutation has led to me being unable to legitimately experience those twists, through no fault of my own. It happens. Oh, well.

Listen mate, as someone who hasn't seen past the second Harry Potter film, someone saying "Snape kills Dumbledoor" isn't a spoiler. Dumbledorf would kick his ass.

Like seriously, what parallel universe do you live in where Snape could even dream of killing Dumbledalf.

Wanna know what would be a serious spoiler if I were to ever finish watching the films? Everything happens for a scientifically plausible reason.

Does the revelation I made in the spoiler tags ever transpire? Fuck if I know! but even confirming or denying that would scar my future viewings of the later films for life.

I have no idea what your first two paragraphs are even conveying. You seem to be saying "This doesn't seem like something I would expect," which kind of makes it a spoiler.

^ I think they're saying that they don't beilive Snape really kills Dumbledore, they think its a joke. Like saying "Harry marries Voldemort" wouldn't be a spoiler because it's obviously not really going to happen.

That said, I dont really think thats valid, since theres always someone who knows nothing at all about the story and therefore couldnt know what is and isnt plausible.

funny story: I once saw on this wiki a Pokemon entry that said "Ash will always be ten years old because the Director won't let him grow older than his ten year old fans." or something like that. Knowing absolutely nothing about Pokemon whatsoever (and thanks to the weird capatalization of Director), i assumed this was an in-universe spoiler. Only quite a bit later when i actually looked something up about pokemon for unrealated reasons did i realise it was a joke. I believe that entry has been removed as i havent found it again.

edited 14th Mar '15 3:33:28 AM by PistolsAtDawn

I had been thinking about spoiler issues and had a random thought I thought I would throw out. Since there was already an active discussion on spoilers it seemed better to throw it here rather than create a new thread.

We have a YMMV tab for YMMV Tropes and a trivia tab for trivia tropes.

Why not have a Spoiler tab for Spoilered Rotten tropes? It doesn't seem like it would be terribly hard to implement. A Spoiler namespace, a Spoiler subpage option, and then just leave it to Wiki Magic to move spoilerific tropes off the mainpage and onto the subpage.

Why do you suggest we split spoilers into two groups?

The problem with that is one of organization. Putting a trope on a subpage just because it contains spoilers will be confusing as hell for people who expect to be able to look through the main page to find everything objective about a work.

That said, something like what you suggest is on the table for the TV Tropes 2.0 redesign — I envision a situation in which examples that are tagged as containing spoilers can be dynamically hidden on the basis of the user's preferences, making the markup itself obsolete.

Good to know. Never mind.

The thought process was that some tropes are so inherently spoilered that even including the trope name on the main page is a spoiler. But since we aren't allowed to spoiler trope names on a list there currently isn't a middle ground for them. However, it appears that 2.0 will solve the issue.

edited 16th Mar '15 8:41:57 AM by Daefaroth

Just wanted to post that I agree with Daefaroth's proposal for a Spoiler Namespace on one condition:

That the works listed in Spoilered Rotten Tropes link to the work's Spoiler Subpages rather than the page for the work itself. This is due to the "Related" tab listing all Tropes linked to the works page including the SR ones; having the SR entries link to Spoiler subpages removes this Interface Spoiler from the work's "Related" page. EDIT: This Interface Spoiler would still exist under the proposed change that Fighteer referenced.

There's also the fact that Tropes that are not inherently spoilerific but would spoil certain aspects of plot, characters, or setting could also be put on those pages to keep the secrets. Such pages could be folderized based on chapters/episodes/acts where the twists take place if they are distinct. (Consecutive or nearly-consecutive chapters/episodes that have spoilers can share a folder.)

Regarding the Character Sidebar: In addition to the above, we could also have, in parenthesis within the folder name, the chapter/episode that the character makes their first significant appearance/interaction in the work if the work has episodes/distinct Act Breaks. Minor additional information after that can be in spoiler font within the entry; major additional information can be relocated to the Spoiler Subpage if we get one. Severe Additional Information is treated as a separate Walking Spoiler entry, with the point at which the information becomes relevant in parentheses. (All Walking Spoilers whose plot twists are at about the same time would go in the same folder, unless there is another general way to identify them that is not itself spoilerific.)

EDIT: Fighteer: The problem there is in Episodic works, as well as multi-work franchises whose works don't have their own pages. In these, there are several points of "seen it" vs "haven't seen it". Either you'd have to make separate pages for each season of an episodic work, or you'll have people wondering why an entry for Season 3 of a 7 Season series isn't showing up.

edited 16th May '15 8:40:19 PM by DonaldthePotholer

Recaps are where you go if you want to avoid all future spoilers for whatever progress you've made on a work. We are not, under any circumstances, going down the rabbit hole of having every spoiler tagged as to what episode/season/chapter it belongs to.