I'm fine with having trope names unspoilered on the main page for a work, but I think that character pages should be allowed to have spoiler-tagged trope names, for the following reasons:
Eddie stated that "if you have to highlight something to know if you want to read it, you've lost". Sure, but plenty of tropers include warnings for where the spoiler okays. So, if it's a long running book series like Warrior Cats then after the spoiler they would say "In Sunrise this major plot twist is revealed" so that the reader knows whether they can open the spoiler yet. Same applies for tv shows (which episode), manga/comics (which chapter/issue), video games in level format, etc. And if it's something short like a single film where you couldn't list what it was in, then you could either give an estimation of how far it is into the film or just expect readers to realize that it's just a movie and won't take long to finish. If something like this was made official policy, then it would be easy to know when you wanted to look at a spoiler. Here's an example of a page with that style implemented. (It's my fanfic, if you were wondering. I have no life.)
Also, many tropes are inherently spoilers. On the main page, having (pardon my ZCE) "Big Bad: Revealed in Episode 12 to be Joe, who for most of the series had been an innocuous background character" is pretty chill, but on the character sheet for Joe, having "Big Bad: In Episode 12 Joe is revealed to be the main antagonist" is stupid because it gives away the reveal even if you don't read the spoilered text. And if we do that, why even bother with spoiler tags? There are tons of tropes like this (Evil All Along, Robotic Reveal, Samus Is a Girl, Face–Heel Turn, Heel–Face Turn, The Mole, Disc-One Final Boss) and leaving them out in the open is just plain bad form.
Several types of readers get screwed over if this is implemented. Say someone is reading a character sheet because they don't mind early spoilers from the work and want to look at the sheet or get a good grip on character personalities. Then, they see major spoilers for something late in the work because the trope name wasn't covered up. Sure, they could stay off the character sheet until they had finished the work, but what if it's a massive work like the aforementioned Warrior Cats or The Wheel of Time? That's months worth of reading before you can even feel safe skimming through a character sheet.
Now, the obvious solution here seems to be to only include those tropes on the work page. But what about spoiler hounds? (I'm one, actually.) Some people see a new character in a work and rather than wait for their secrets to be revealed, they rush off to TV Tropes and look up their character sheet to find out all about them. (Incredibly guilty of this.) They'd be getting screwed over by that, because we'd be lying by omission about the character if we don't include those tropes. I mean, who would choose digging through a work page for information about a single character over having all of those character's tropes together in one neat place? And in the same vein, people who've completed the work and wanted to look back over the characters would notice the glaringly obvious missing information. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they just readded it outright.
I really cannot see any advantage in removing spoiler tags from trope names on character sheets that could not be gained from official policy requiring you to say what part of the work a spoiler comes from. (And as to how we'd enforce that, we could comment some stuff out like Zero Context Examples.)
"Oh great! Let's pile up all the useless cats and hope a tree falls on them!"I agree with Lightflame. For example, what if a character does a Heroic Sacrifice in the finale? That's a huge spoiler for anyone who reads the character sheet. Saying that it shouldn't be added then isn't a good solution. This wiki is meant for cataloguing tropes, not being able to add a fitting trope to the character sheet partly defeats that purpose.
I'm starting to question the need for spoiler tags in work pages in general. I mean, the Homestuck pages don't use spoiler tags despite of / because of the frequent massive plot twists and those pages work fine. Perhaps we should just put a warning up on the top of works pages to inform readers that they should only read these pages if they don't mind spoilers.
It's a little pointless to spoiler tag trope names because the user can just hover over it and see the name, accidentally or deliberately. It's one of the guidelines mentioned on Handling Spoilers.
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Yeah, but Homestuck is free and available to everyone, and it was only because the pages kept breaking the wiki. You can easily catch up with Homestuck if you're just prepared to sink some time into it.
If work pages didn't have spoiler tags, then you wouldn't even be able to skim them unless you'd seen/read/played the entire work in question. And if it's something long-running, then you'll have to drop a lot of money before you can even look at the page.
That's why we have spoiler tags.
"Oh great! Let's pile up all the useless cats and hope a tree falls on them!"I absolutely agree with Lightflame and Viira on the character sheet issue. Not spoiling trope names on the main pages makes sense: the examples can be easily worded and then spoil tagged not to give anything away. But there are way too many tropes whose names are spoilers that cannot be added to a character sheet without giving something away, and simply not adding them is not a good solution as it would take away a lot of important content from character sheets.
Having separate spoiler sections on character pages would also be quite a mess. How would they be set up, and what if that character is a Walking Spoiler? If someone is browsing a character sheet and doesn't want to be spoiled, simply reading the warnings and seeing that there are spoiled out tropes should be enough. If they really don't want to be spoiled, they would simply not hover their cursor over the spoiled trope name and just read the non-spoilery tropes.
Well, according to Character Sheets, character sheets frequently contain spoilers, and thus, should be read at one's own risk.
Therefore, if you don't want to be spoilt in the first place, then DON'T read them.
This note has to be enforced now that Fast Eddie explicitly banned the use of spoilering the trope name itself.
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The separate section worked just fine for K. The Walking Spoiler has been put in a separate folder at the bottom, with a warning and no spoiler tags.
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There's a difference between unavoidable spoilers like "Harry Potter is a wizard" and avoidable spoilers like "the killer is...". Of course you're going to get some spoilers if you read through the character page, but we have spoiler tags so we can avoid giving away major spoilers. Also, I'm making my arguments because I think that if I debate well enough and get enough supporters, we could convince Fast Eddie to allow us to spoil trope names on character sheets as long as we had an unspoiler-tagged bit after that saying what part of the work it came from.
Yes, but that won't work for everything. From reading that page, K appears to be a 12-Episode Anime with one character whose existence is a spoiler. He's easy enough to hide. And hey, I could see it working for some other works too. But with a sufficiently popular series that has some plot twists, you'd end up juggling a pile of Walking Spoilers, and that could get awkward.
EDIT: But hey, although I still believe that we should allow spoiler taggged tropes on character pages, the folder looks useful. I'll try it out.
edited 22nd Jul '13 7:43:46 AM by Lightflame
"Oh great! Let's pile up all the useless cats and hope a tree falls on them!"![]()
That's one character. I looked at some of the other folders and they had plenty of tropes completely spoiled out. According to the new policy, all of those tropes would have to be reworded or removed, and it is pretty much impossible to reword a lot of tropes that revolve around death, switching sides, new powers etc. since the trope name itself would be a spoiler. The other solution would be to have two entries for every character, one in a regular folder and the other in a spoiler folder, but that would likely just create confusion and arguments about what should go where. This policy just does not work for character sheets.
For long-running or spoiler heavy shows like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead there is a policy for character sheets that works pretty well IMO. The only tropes that can spoiled out are ones from the current/most recent season, so the page doesn't end up a sea of spoiled out tropes and everything will be revealed eventually after a certain amount of time has passed. There are plenty of warnings put up as well. This would work for TV, but I don't know if it can be adapted to comics, movies, books, etc.
I'm going to agree that unspoilering the names of tropes in Character Sheets is a bad idea. On a main work page, many tropes are not inherently spoilery without context. However, when applied to a single character, things such as Big Bad or any sort of Death Trope would be a dead giveaway.
By the way, do we have a trope category for game-changing twists? Basically, things like the tropes discussed here whose very presence on a work page is considered a spoiler, including most of the Ending Tropes or All Just a Dream.
If there's no way to include tropes without spoiling, then the article page should clearly have a "Warning! Spoiler tropes names ahead" of some sort.
I don't quite agree with leaving tropes out altogether just because they're natural spoilers. A better argument for not including every trope in the world is if it would turn the page into a natter list, nitpicking at every trivia and such. In other words, a trope would ideally be included if it's important enough for mention, and spoiler tropes can fit that criteria.
My point still stands, Lightflame, as what your meant about spoilersI love explaining things, so... is what I meant when I said "Character Sheets says to read the character sheets at your own risk if you don't want to be spoilered".
edited 24th Jul '13 5:23:48 AM by KarjamP
While I personally don't mind having a few spoilered tropes in a character sheet unless it too many (Walkers entry on the Spec Ops The Line CS for example, while necessary, is just ugly) and feel that locking out people that haven't read/watched/played the work from reading the CS for unspoilered tropes would be rather strange (as someone mentioned, a shorter series, okay, but a longer series, not so much).
But as it has been decided I would personally suggest moving those specific tropes to the main page. While having a spoilersection would be a solution, the question is how does it work for works who have Loads And Loads Of Characters. Those would most likely just get bogged down. Though having character tropes in main page would look a bit weird,I feel that would be the best alternative of the ones I can think of right now.
Edit: In other words, I agree with Lighflame
edited 27th Jul '13 12:51:08 AM by Sigge
Without love, it cannot be seen.Another point. You know how the aim of the Wiki is to catalog tropes? Well, if you can't put spoiler tagged trope names on Character Sheets, there are certain tropes that nobody would ever put anywhere on the Wiki. It would be killing usage of tropes.
What do I mean by this? Take The Hero Dies for example. It's not "the Decoy Protagonist dies", it's not "a heroic character dies", it's not "the main character dies at the beginning and spends the work in the afterlife", and it's not "the main character dies but comes back". It's the protagonist of the work dying for real at or very near the end of the work. That's it.
If you can't spoil trope names on works pages (which I am completely okay with and very much agree with), nobody would put this trope on the works page because it would give away the death of the main character. That's okay.
If you can't spoiler tag tropes on character sheets, then nobody can put it there either, because that would give away the death of the central character.
Therefore, it would only ever be used for potholes, because if you have to have a trope like that without spoiler tags, then you don't put it on the page.
EDIT: Also, I just looked back and it said that people came up with the idea for Character Sheets because the works pages were getting a little messy and it was a place to organize tropes by character. If we have to remove spoiler tags from trope names on the sheets, then we'll either be taking one of two options:
- Making the character sheets accessible to new readers by removing all spoilery trope names and putting those spoilers behind spoiler tags on the work page. Great...unless you're finished the work and want to add some important content to a character's section but you can't, want a recap of the character and their twists, want to spoil yourself about specific characters, or just want to see what tropes apply to a character based on everything in the work. It makes the character sheets okay for newbies, but useless for those who are more into the work.
- Taking the spoiler tags off everything, since the trope names already give it away. Great if you've seen everything in a work and want to look over the tropes, not so great for everyone else. Newbies can't even skim the characters because they'll get spoiled. Spoiler hounds will get their spoilers, but they won't be able to zero in on what's a spoiler and what isn't because there are no tags. Anybody who isn't completely up to date with the work will have to avoid the sheets because the new episode could contain spoilers. Not too bad for a 12-Episode Anime or a single book, terrible for a Long Runner, fairly long fanfic, long-ish serial book series like Warrior Cats or The Dresden Files, etc.
Both those options screw a bunch of people over. In theory, the way most pages are still structured works: Works pages shouldn't have trope names spoiler tagged because you only know that the trope occurs, not how it's used. Character Sheets can have trope names spoiler-tagged, because while it's usually not a spoiler when a work has a Big Bad or Character Death, it can frequently be a spoiler that the trope applies to a specific character.
edited 28th Jul '13 6:23:11 AM by Lightflame
"Oh great! Let's pile up all the useless cats and hope a tree falls on them!"As I've said, Character Sheets actually warns of spoilers being on the character sheets, so they can be put there WITHOUT spoiler tags.
Besides, Fast Eddie himself says "no" to that on Ask The Tropers.
You DO know how difficult it is to convince him otherwise, ESPIECALLY since he's the admin of the site itself.
edited 29th Jul '13 1:12:29 AM by KarjamP
As someone who has spoilers set to always show...
Would it be possible to have two character pages? I know they can be split into allies/antagonists or such as it is. Would it be practical to have one for regular characters, possibly with a spoiler-tropes folder, and one for any Walking Spoiler characters, with a BIG NOTE or somesuch that says if you read that page, you deserve any bloody spoiling you get?
In navigating around, I've found the extra spoilerriffic folder easier to handle than miles of spoilerage. The 'miles' part was a good part of the reason I checked the 'always show' option in the first place.
edited 29th Jul '13 2:34:17 AM by Candi
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry PratchettI can't see a good reason to have two character sheets besides the usual split for a huge size/different seasons, or related, but different series(like how Pokemon does it for the Generations).
I know that we've talked about a special folder in the past that has all Spoilers unmarked.
I'm not against the second idea, since it would fit on the main page.(and at worst, if it got huge, a Spoiler Namespace would not be the worst idea ever)
Those are my only thoughts, but I'm still thinking that Character Sheets are inherently spoiler-based anyway.
Shadow?Are we allowed to override Eddie by crowner? I find allowing spoilered trope names to be a far simpler solution than anything proposed so far.
Trust me, I'm an engineer!

There will definitively have to be a note - otherwise, the example would just be readded.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman