I often use the site to find new things to read, personally, so I'd hate to see us go the "just spoil everything" route.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Eddie's mind is set on this one, and policy seems to be shifting towards tagging fewer and fewer things.
By the way, is there a thread for spoiler policy on trope pages? Because I'm still of the opinion that a reader shouldn't have to, for example, avoid the Death Tropes entirely unless they're not in the middle of experiencing any works. (I had a game inadvertently ruined for me that way.) There's logic in "well, they're spoilers by nature anyway" but why would we want to make whole chunks of the site unfriendly to readers? Especially since some of those readers might want to contribute to the site. I guess that's on-topic here too, because it's a like issue to the "people shouldn't be expected to be completely up to date on a Long Runner to skim its pages safely" thing.
(Oh, and I saw Homestuck mentioned- that's a bit of a special case because it was too much for the coding and also the comic used to be updated constantly, like multiple-times-a-day constantly. I wouldn't hold it up as how site policy should go.)
edit: something I forgot to mention on the part about trope pages.
edited 30th Jul '13 6:26:45 PM by InsanityPrelude
Eddie's argument is "if you have to highlight something to see if you want to read it, it defeats the purpose of the spoiler tag".
However, if we simply make it site policy note when it happened (for example, "In episode 13", "In Chapter 27 of Book 5" or "In Book 5", "During the Fieldlord's Keep Dungeon level", etc), then it doesn't defeat the purpose of the spoiler tags.
"Oh great! Let's pile up all the useless cats and hope a tree falls on them!"![]()
That's precisely why I've never read any of the Death Tropes. Otherwise,I avoid works I'm following as best I can.
I agree with marking which season/book/level/etc. a spoiler takes place in.
edited 30th Jul '13 6:20:22 PM by Rotpar
But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.One more thing, rather than rewording my post again: when I say "contribute to the site" I guess I mean the site in general. I know there's no way to hide spoilers in the page source itself, so I probably wouldn't edit sections like Death Tropes. I'll leave that to the spoiler hounds. But it'd be nice to be able to skim a page (say, to see if it already has an example for a work that I know contains the trope) without getting other works ruined for you.
Anyway, back to work pages. I like Lightflame's suggestion.
edited 30th Jul '13 6:28:51 PM by InsanityPrelude
But like Lightflame said here
, that means we would never use those tropes with spoiler titles in any work page. And I reiterate that I don't think being a spoiler makes a trope not important enough to list.
I prefer that we list it even if we have to list it unmarked with a warning in the synopsis.
edited 30th Jul '13 11:40:49 PM by Trivialis
Try telling that to Fast Eddie, who updated the Spoiler Policy to accommodate his ruling.
And if you do, please leave off emotionally loaded terms like "dictatorship", "fascist", and so forth. Whether or not FE is ultimately persuadable on the subject (I suspect not, but I'm not inside his head so I can't say for sure) becomes irrelevant if you start throwing around those kinds of terms, or even if you basically accuse him of everything mentioned in Murder, Arson, and Jaywalking without getting overly emotional about it.
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That's a non-response.
If we let Fast Eddie make all the decisions with no input, why do we even have Wiki Talk? As co-editors of this wiki, we can, and should, advise the admin on the wiki.
Yes, I am telling Fast Eddie right now, along with anyone else that reads this. All we're doing is exploring the natural consequences of a policy, to see how effective it is. I don't see what's wrong with that.
I will admit I have a problem with his edit to that page, albeit a different one. Specifically, I don't think any statement along the lines of "we don't have to trope everything" is any kind of good policy, since in this context that's basically putting some other concern ahead of the wiki's core mission.
I suspect this is going to turn into one of those compromise attempts that pleases no one.
I would say part of the collective issue is everyone's idea of 'acceptable' spoilers varies due to the wide range of interests and topics.
There's also how much of the subject in question should be 'spoiled', and it's not necessarily related to how old the work in question is.
There's not going to be a solution that'll make everyone happy. Not with a topic like this. All that can be done is a hopefully acceptable compromise.
For my suggestions: The "spoiler folder" for spoiler tropes on works pages currently seems like the most practical solution. On character pages Walking Spoilers can also be placed in that folder.
Trying to prevent spoilers on trope pages would not be practical. I can't even imagine how that would work, while I can see it adding massively to the workload of those trying to keep the wiki looking professional. All someone submitting an example can do is try and hide/not put down something that'll give away the game while explaining clearly why this work definitely does contain an example of the trope.
The sad part is, if a work's been out for more than a few months, there's going to be the risk of running into spoilers for it -even if a troper just learned that existed. We can work out how to minimize them, but we can't eliminate them.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry PratchettIt seems like you're saying "we can't possibly properly spoiler-tag everything," but...that's exactly what we already do. Am I misinterpreting you?
edited 31st Jul '13 9:11:26 PM by Discar
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.@ 66: I was referring to post 54 and its reference to examples from works being on certain pages being a spoiler in and of itself (even if there is no text visible except the work name). There's really no way to practically handle not spoiling works that are added to spoiler-by-default pages as they are revealed in books or on a show.
Unless a week or more is waited to add them, but that's asking every active editor with an interest in the show to all agree not to add an example for X period of time. If nothing else, it'll invite a new kind of trolling.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry PratchettI definitely disagree with the concept of spoilers being shown. Some tropes, by their very nature, must invite spoilers, therefore it's totally fair to leave off spoilers. But I don't see how a character sheet is different from the main page in this regard. Some tropes about plot will be spoilers by necessity. Some tropes about characters will be, too. No way around it, and it seems awfully arbitrary to say spoilers are fair game on the character sheet.
Suggestion: If, by Word of Eddie, we have a non-spoiler tag policy on character sheets, @Eddie, could you maybe help us out and put up a banner on the Characters/ namespace (like with the Trivia/ and YMMV/ namespaces) noting that spoilers are to be unmarked and caveat lector* ?
In keeping with the policy I pulled the spoilers from one of the charsheets I wrote (Characters.Terra), and manually flagged it as Spoilered Rotten.
edited 5th Nov '13 7:49:36 AM by StarSword
Trust me, I'm an engineer!I think that's a very bad idea. For a work with only one story, read in chronological order (say, Literature.The Dresden Files, just off the top of my head), no spoilers on character pages would probably work fine. Put a warning on the top of the page and we're good to go. But multiverses are becoming far more common these days, and they usually have shared character pages.
I will admit though that this policy made me take a second look at a number of character sheets and pare out blatantly unnecessary spoilers. I remember Characters.Silver Spoon had one character tagged. Just her whole entry, completely whited out, description, name, and everything. The only spoiler about her was that she was a specific character's wife.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.![]()
Even linear works, I see issues. If unmarked spoilers will be on character pages, you'll have people who have started a Long Runner, but can't go to the character page because of unmarked spoilers. I think it's tough for them in the first place, but I'm also worried that it will also lead to character-specific tropes getting put in the work's main page.
It's not like people who haven't seen all of a work don't have contributions.
I understand no spoilers in recaps, but character pages seems like it'll make reading more difficult and could lead to issues with a work's main page.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.Some tropers (as in post 70) believe that there is a total ban against spoiler tags in character sheets. There is no such ban in the guidelines.
Administrivia.Handling Spoilers says,
So one must not hide the trope name in a spoiler.
The same page bans spoiler tags from recap pages, but not from character sheets. It also says,
But if one must not hide the trope names, then one can only hide the rest of the example. Thus, a character sheet might say,
- Heroic Sacrifice: Bob duels the monster, and takes a fatal wound, so that the others have time to escape.
This is an unmarked spoiler for Bob making a Heroic Sacrifice, and so, the character sheet may need a warning for unmarked spoilers. Because the character sheet has a warning for unmarked spoilers, one might even remove the spoiler tag from the rest of the example. Administrivia.Handling Spoilers does not require the removal of the spoiler tag.

What if there are spoiler tropes that have nothing to do with characters?