Updating Spoiler Policy.

I would like to propose an amendment to the spoiler policy regarding point 4: On Characters pages, do not ever conceal the name of a character in a folder or header. note You can use descriptors where the character's name would be an inherent spoiler (example: "The Killer").

I have been talking about it with people, as seen here and here, and I believe that character pages should be viewed as a spoilers off page, in the same vein as Fridge, heartwarming, tearjerker, and other pages like it.

If this could be discussed that would be great.

Personally,

1. The reason Moments are Spoilers Off is that Moments examples are typically about emotional and plot-heavy scenes. And Fridge, Headscratchers, WMG are theory-dumps, so they naturally contain spoilers. Characters/ aren't primarly about the plot twists unless someone is a Tomato Surprise.

2. As pointed out, Characters/ are splits of the main work page similarly to Recap/ so the less the rules deviate the easier. Also people often do check Characters/ pages for the character bios without knowing the full plot.

3. Spoilers Off in general is an extreme measure and is only considered where there's an issue with readability without it, so I can't think of a compelling reason for changing from the current case-by-case basis.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 14th 2023 at 11:31:48 AM

Well if not to complete remove spoilers, I think the note should be removed.

Okay, but why? It’s a great tool to hide a Walking Spoiler or help cover up a reveal (like a murder mystery/Evil All Along reveal) - we can trope the person before and after the reveal simultaneously without any accidental spoilers. I don’t see why one disagreement over MCU stuff should lead to getting rid of a rule that’s applicable in multiple other scenarios.

I'll be honest, I'm totally fine with how the spoiler policy currently is for the most part. I just find the idea of hiding someone's name in a character folder for an extended period of time to be the one gripe I have.

Same, I'm fine with the policy the way it is. If there's one big Walking Spoiler, then just leave an Unmarked Spoiler warning on their folder. If most of the characters are that spoilery for some reason (or the work is in the public domain) then mark spoilers off on that page.

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Mar 14th 2023 at 2:15:09 AM

What they’re referring to is largely the idea that a character’s folder can have a pseudonym if their name is a spoiler, not dealing with a Walking Spoiler in and of itself, just to be clear.

Like, a page that I think handles it very well is Scream: TV Series - the killers are troped separately before and after they’re revealed, and as it is now you can read the page and even read the folders of the killers without ever knowing it.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Mar 14th 2023 at 5:17:40 AM

Well that’s different because the show is over. Nothing is going to get updated. For a growing franchise like the MCU there should be at least a time frame of when the spoilers can be removed. My personal opinion is when it hits streaming or physical media.

The ongoing movie series does the same thing - the killers are troped pre-reveal on the individual movie’s character sheet, while their tropes after the reveal are done on Scream: Ghostface. So it’s not just timeframe or ongoing vs. finished, it makes sense in other places and keeps everything equal.

It's been a while since the last time we had a "Spoilers Off on character pages" thread, so I suppose we were due.

My response hasn't changed: There is no reason to do so. Recap and the Moments are intended for post-viewing, so it makes sense that they would be Spoilers Off. Character pages are not intended for post-viewing.

Edited by RallyBot2 on Mar 14th 2023 at 6:09:26 AM

I disagree. Who reads about characters before watching a movie? I view it the same way as any moments page.

I believe that Whodunnits are an entirely different beast for character pages. Their might need to be a clause for those.

I mean, some people do, but eh.

One thing to remember is that a lot of people coming by the page may not be there to read it necessarily, but to crosswick a trope or to do wick cleanup/cleanup in general. And while the editing screen will reveal these spoilers anyway, it's only nice to protect people as much as possible if they're only visiting the page for an unrelated reason.

Speaking of crosswicking, these tropes should also be crosswicked to the trope pages, and while some of these pages will be spoilers off, not all of them will be. Allowing spoiler tags and the like for character pages means that if the examples are crosswicked correctly, people reading the trope page won't be spoiled.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 14th 2023 at 6:27:38 AM

Wouldn't you know it, a clause that also helps other movies with spoiler characters already exists - it's the one you're advocating to get rid of. Like, do you see the issue there? The policy helps more than it causes harm everywhere, not just in one genre.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Mar 14th 2023 at 6:31:14 AM

Not seeing the issue with the spoiler policy as-is nor the need to change it.

As mentioned on the ATT, we have an awful lot of Characters pages for big Shared Universe franchises with "everything before X is unmarked" warnings at the top.

We do that for Star Wars, Star Trek, the comic book Marvel universe, the cinematic Marvel universe and probably a dozen or two other things.

The history and the number of different works mean that it gets really tricky to do anything else. As long as there's a clear (and, ideally, specific) warning top of page, I'm personally good with that.

That's not always the approach we take for the works pages themselves - but then if I'm looking at a Characters entry for someone who's appeared across 10+ works over decades, that's very different to reading the works page for the first film/book/comic they appeared in 15 years ago.

The policy is that characters within a shared universe get one Characters page entry, not one per work, and that really complicates things sometimes.

Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 14th 2023 at 10:39:11 AM

The core problem here is that the combo of two factors. First, example lists are expected to be pre-viewing in nature - you should not have to experience the work to see the listed examples from it. (Remember - and I cannot emphasize this enough - our work and trope pages are supposed to be written for people who do not edit the site.)

The second is that the practices of putting character-specific and episode-specific tropes on Characters subpages and Recap subpages respectively means we are implicitly including those pages in the above, making them pre-viewing as well. Since elements of both of those subpage types are post-viewing (as people have noted), this is why we have such a conflict, particularly with spoiler markup. It won't change until we adjust our approach to either spoilers and/or how we list tropes on said subpages.

And no matter what adjustment gets made, it will almost certainly require a major cleanup effort to follow, which is why no one really wants to push for any substantial change.

Yeah. That.

Honestly, I think Characters and Recap pages serve a great purpose, but I'd have absolutely no objection to a policy that allowed duplication of tropes between the spoiler-tagged works page and those untagged (or partially tagged) subpages.

I also don't see any reason to change the spoiler policy with respect to character pages.

Said my piece in the ATT thread and I stick by it: for the most part the spoiler policy works just fine. For character pages of larger franchises and long-form works, I think the practice of using Warnings is a good middle ground.

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 14th 2023 at 2:57:37 PM

So I actually kind of agree with OP? To an extent. It's extremely difficult to talk about certain characters without Swiss cheese entries when a lot of potential spoilery things are being coalesced into their folders. This can only really be solved by giving individual characters their own pages, which sometimes works but not always since we only extend that courtesy due to page length concerns.

I'm not sure an amendment to the policy should be made per-say, but I do think the concerns are valid.

I mean, we are allowed to make individual pages spoilers off if that's easier, but that's a much different thing and requires consensus to enact.

What I’m suggesting we implement was a time limit regarding spoilers on major franchises like the MCU, possibly based on digital or physical release date. We could also have it so the only character pages that are spoilers off are hub pages like the MCU. I think that explains what im trying to do.

The characters that brought up my concerns are Clea, Love, Hercules, Skaar, and T’Challa. They are currently listed under aliases for their folders. I think that since all of their films and TV shows are released on digital and physical media, the aliases should be removed. Especially since they will be updated in the future anyways when the characters return in more substantial roles.

Edited by GateStarX on Mar 15th 2023 at 3:24:45 AM

I'm against any notion of a work being old/popular enough to allow unmarked spoilers. Being public domain is already odd to me, but a line there is fine. If a work is It Was His Sled, that'd just go to YMMV as a mention. The only reasonable threshold if the page becomes ugly from hiding most of the text, so it gets a warning.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 15th 2023 at 7:05:39 PM

What does digital and physical media have to do with anything? The Sopranos is available everywhere and has been for over a decade. Doesn't mean we want to be blasting Tony Soprano's ultimate fate everywhere just 'cause.

Speculative Troping. If the next trailer makes them the main character, then we can revisit the spoiler status for that character, but that's different from spoilers-offing them now when their very existence is a plot twist.

I don't see anything wrong with the current approach of doing it case-by-case and revisiting 'spoiler-characters-who-get-Late-Arrival Spoiler'd' later on. The MCU is a unique beast in terms of size and interconnectivity, so I consider it an edge case, not the media by which we should set our rules.

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 15th 2023 at 5:31:15 AM

You covered all of my thoughts in much clearer words than I could’ve.