Updating Spoiler Policy.

Revisiting this -

I've taken the proposed rewording of the spoiler guidance on How to Create a Character Page to the Administrivia page update requests thread.

As covered here a few posts back, that's not proposing any sort of policy change, just trying to clarify the current guidance - including the preferred approach for agreeing changes to the cut-off point for unmarked spoilers on a Characters page (which is the query that led to this thread in the first place).

Please comment there if you've got views or concerns on this. Thanks!

And now added to the Administrivia page. So hopefully that makes future discussions simpler.

I think that’s a good stop measure.

It's gonna be fun on the bun!

As this was brought up,

Self-Fulfilling Spoiler has this line:

Between experience of casual readers (who Handling Spoilers even states don't care about spoilers, and if they did, they shouldn't read the work's trope summary then) and the site's mission to document tropes, I'd think the latter would take priority, and the mentioned way of avoiding adding a spoilery example isn't a good way to go.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I'd agree. But so many people do care about spoilers, which is why threads like these get made at all. From my point of view everything goes better if spoilers are off and warnings are given in advance, but I think some people really would prefer reading an incomplete page. (Personally I think it's insane to read a page for a work you haven't experienced and get upset if you're spoiled, but...)

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

and I thought I was alone with the opinion that users who look up trope lists before they are finished consuming the work are possibly doing it wrong... if they care about spoilers.

Edited by eroock on Apr 25th 2024 at 9:24:50 PM

I mean I do it all the time, but I also don't really care about being spoiled when I'm doing it.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I consider articles partially substituting watching the work, spoilers on or off. I generally avoid pages for works I don't yet (primarly because I don't care about them until then and have other areas to work on), but for the sake of a cleanup, I am willing to put feelings aside.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

The tropes which would typically be left off a page for spoiler avoidance are those in the second folder of Spoilered Rotten, although The Ending Changes Everything is safer than the others because it doesn't reveal the identity of the twist, only that one exists.

The third folder used to be the same for character pages, but in the last few years a lot of these tropes have been moved to the work page for not being characterization tropes, which has the side effect of obscuring which character the trope applies to and preventing the reader from being spoiled as a result. And in any case, it's much easier to deal with spoiler-heavy characters on the Characters/ page, because one character's folder can be made Spoilers Off without affecting the rest of the work.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

~Twiddler moving the policy page specific talk here

I'm saying it should naturally be phrased in reverse, first to say "no spoilers are allowed above the example line" (which is cited in different cleanups), then include the quote and image as specific cases for clarity. At Handling Spoilers, which Spoilers Off and What to Put at the Top of a Page would reference.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 28th 2024 at 3:13:39 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Something like this?

---

On Handling Spoilers:

1. No spoilers in the main body of the description, above the "Examples" line. Just don't do it.

to

1. No spoilers in the main body of the description, above the "Examples" line. Just don't do it.^note This includes images and page-top quotes.

---

On Spoilers Off:

"Similarly, the page image cannot be a spoiler, as it's above the example line and the first thing most readers see."

to

"Similarly, the page image cannot be a spoiler, as it's above the example line and the first thing most readers see."

---

On What to Put at the Top of a Page:

Add after the third bullet point:

• Keep it spoiler-free.

I've missed that the part was already at Handling Spoilers, but pretty much.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup