My opinion on "ItWasHisSled"-esque spoilers

Simply put, if Red Vs Blue is so spoiler-laden that any attempt to read the article for it would be like walking into a minefield, then do not read the article. Really, this isn't hard.

Wait. Are we talking about removing spoilers from RVB, or removing spoiler tags? Because the former seems ludicrous. The latter makes sense if, as mentioned, it's overflowing with spoilers.

I would also point out that the OP's example (The Winter Soldier) is not anywhere near "It Was His Sled" territory. That trope is for when you cannot know anything about the work without also knowing the spoiler — the spoiler has become as famous as the work itself — Rosebud was his sled, Bruce Willis is dead, the Village is actually in the modern world, the planet is Earth....

edited 23rd Jan '15 4:51:10 PM by Madrugada

...Bilbo keeps the Ring, Darth Vader is Luke's father, Jesus dies, Neo really is the One, Voldemort kills Snape(That last one is actually kind of a spoiler for Harry Potter, despite the memetic mutation, so read at your own risk)...

edited 23rd Jan '15 4:19:14 PM by SolipSchism

It's true. I haven't seen The Winter Soldier and I highlighted the spoiler in the OP assuming it was Hydra taking over SHIELD as referenced in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Now I know the other twist. Apparently there's more than one. I'd probably be annoyed if I were actually planning to watch that movie.

Dude, that's not the meme, that's an actual spoiler. The meme is Snape kills Dumbledore.

edited 23rd Jan '15 4:26:10 PM by troacctid

Yep. Those are It Was His Sled. That's the level of "But everybody knows that" that it takes.

Although I would argue that "Jesus comes back" is more the spoiler than "Jesus dies"

edited 23rd Jan '15 4:54:06 PM by Madrugada

Oops. *River Song voice* Spoilahs.

I'd say that I'm for the idea of character pages having unmarked spoilers by default. Considering how we don't spoil trope names, some would automatically give stuff away anyway for one. For another, it's hard to really talk about a character and his/her development to any meaningful degree if one is worried about spoilers. Plus, even the very existence of some characters can be a spoiler for a work, depending on what the character's purpose in the story is. Honestly, I feel like if someone is into a work enough to look at its character sheet, they'll already know enough not to worry about being spoiled.

I think having them unmarked by default is a bad idea. A blanket solution because it's a problem on some pages is just not a good way to go about it, since it detracts from every page where it isn't a problem. The way it is now, with unmarking spoilers on pages where it's a problem, works better.

Why not just on character pages, though? I laid out my argument there, but can you make a case for the other side? I'm not for removing spoiler marks on everything, just on that subset of pages (though it doesn't necessarily matter too much to me either way).

I have to say, I don't feel strongly about it, but I'm inclined to agree here. I don't see how a character page is ever something you should look at if you're concerned about spoilers.

A recap page is never supposed to contain spoilers for future episodes, and they're spoilers-off for previous episodes and (I believe) for the current episode; a trope page and a work page depend on the prevalence of spoilers; but a character page is expected to cover a character's entire development, so you should expect it to have spoilers. Spoilers-off just makes sense here.

The issue with Characters subpages isn't the content; it's the format. The fact that a trope is linked to its associated characters makes it impossible to hide who it applies to in the event that becomes an inherent spoiler.

I should also reiterate that there is never a guarantee that, reading a work article, you will not encounter something that spoils the story for you. The onus is always on the reader here.

That is a better point.

The reason Characters/ pages don't need a "no spoiler markup" rule is that banning the markup would negatively impact the wiki. The solution of unspoiling everything up to a certain point tends to work better than unspoiling everything in the entire work.

As an obvious example of how unspoiling everything would lead to major issues, look at Characters.Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the related pages. Because it's not worth making a separate character page for the comics, this means that comic spoilers are on the page, and unspoiling up to the end of the televised Buffyverse while leaving comic spoilers whited out seems to be the best compromise solution.

But, as mentioned, there lies the issue of characters whose presence would be a Walking Spoiler, as it may be. Then there are tropes that, when applied to the characters, would spoil major elements solely from the trope name, and since we don't spoil trope names, that causes further issues.

Those are the cases where the page should be marked as spoilers-off.

I.e., "Warning: This work contains one or more characters who are a Walking Spoiler. Spoilers on this page will be left unmarked. Proceed at your own risk."

That's unnecessary. Just mark that one character's folder (each character should have their own folders anyway) "Spoiler Character," and you're good to go.

That just introduces more problems. Many Walking Spoiler characters would be spoiled just by revealing their name—that's part of what makes them a Walking Spoiler. Others would be spoiled by marking the folder as a Walking Spoiler. Still others are spoiled by putting them in a single folder that is labeled with two names so as to reveal that it's Two Aliases, One Character. And the idea of marking the folder Walking Spoiler without the character's name is even worse, because there's no way to tell who the character is before opening it, and an astute enough reader will notice that a particular character isn't listed, and thus must be the walking spoiler.

I stand by my earlier statement that slapping a big spoiler label on something collective but specific (i.e., a folder, which is a specific part of the page but still contains multiple items, unlike a spoiled example or a spoilers-off page) is problematic due to drawing attention to it. It makes more sense to make the page spoilers-off (talking specifically about subpages here, not the page for the whole work; bigger spoilers are needed to justify that in my eyes).

Again, I don't ever see why someone worried about spoilers should be looking at a character sheet anyway, so I feel like if a work has a Walking Spoiler character, the whole character sheet should be spoilers-off and marked with a spoiler warning.

edited 30th Jan '15 12:54:39 PM by SolipSchism

Pretty much 100% agreed there.

This is off-topic, anyway. This is supposed to be about It Was His Sled, not character sheets. We have other threads for that.

Oops. That's actually embarassingly true.

But I do think that question has been answered, basically, back on the first page.

If the folder name doesn't need to include a particularly spoilery alias, it shouldn't. Anyone looking for Tom Riddle would know to look under "Voldemort", but people who have only read book 1 wouldn't know the name Riddle.

(I deliberately used a well known spoiler revealed early in its series to illustrate that people do visit character pages before they are finished with the work. Which is why spoiler tags are necessary in the first place.)

edited 16th Jun '18 5:51:13 PM by bwburke94

Are you serious? With a work as spoiler-laden as Harry Potter, I would not dare open any character folders before finishing it.

I tried to start a thread talking about Handling Spoilers in general, but it was closed and I was told to talk about it here.

And I agree with despoiling all character pages, since they are all heavily spoiler filled anyway.

x21 I just realized that you forgot another It Was His Sled spoiler: Palpatine is Darth Sidious.

edited 18th Feb '15 5:38:31 AM by SatoshiBakura