What if all character sheets were Spoilers Off?

The way we currently handle spoilers on character sheets is strange and counterproductive.

Let's say there's a show in which Bob, a major character, is Killed Off for Real at some point. This is a big plot twist and discussing it would of course be considered a spoiler. So on the show's character sheet, you'd list it this way:

Bob

• Killed Off for Real: Gets shot to death by Alice in episode 22.

Can you see the problem here? We're using spoiler tags to cover up the fact that Bob dies... right next to the Killed Off for Real trope which says that he dies and is uncovered due to Handling Spoilers stating that trope names should never be hidden. So which is it? Are we hiding the fact that Bob dies or not? If I'm not mistaken, this means that every spoilery trope on a character sheet is by definition a Self-Fulfilling Spoiler: you can figure out what's underneath the spoiler tag just by looking at the trope name right next to it.

According to Self-Fulfilling Spoiler, when it's impossible to list a trope without spoiling something big, we're in theory supposed to just not put the trope on the page at all. In practice, I've never seen anyone actually follow this rule and leave off an important trope for the sake of saving newbies from spoilers.

With all that said, it seems to me that the best solution would be to simply make all character sheets Spoilers Off since it's impossible to not get spoiled while reading them. Thoughts?

Edited by Zuxtron on Aug 20th 2018 at 12:30:22 PM

I hate them, too, but there's hardly anything that I can do but say,"I agree"

Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break

I suggest spoilers on if the new episode/film offers new details that newcomers wouldn't already know, and then spoilers off after two to three weeks (or six months) when it becomes It Was His Shed moment.

It doesn't matter whether the episode came out today or ten years ago: seeing Killed Off for Real on someone's character sheet spoils that the character dies no matter how many spoiler tags you put on there.

If the trope is on the work's page, it's not a spoiler since it doesn't give away the most crucial aspect of the spoiler (who dies), just that someone dies at some point. But if it's on a character page, the position of the trope tells you who the trope applies to, making the spoiler much worse.

We don't have a blanket ban on spoiler tags on Characters pages. Even in the hypothetical Killed Off for Real example noted above, the details of the death can be tagged even if the fact of it isn't. Also, make sure you're using KOFR properly: it isn't just any time someone dies.

Our wiki is for presenting information to an audience in an entertaining fashion. Spoiler tags work against that purpose by concealing information. Thus, they should be used to the minimum degree possible. Where marking spoilers and presenting useful information are incompatible, then presenting information wins, always. In these cases, the article should be given a HERE THERE BE SPOILERS warning in the header and the spoiler tags removed. However, it's a judgment call, not an absolute rule.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

(I am aware that not all death is KOFR. This hypothetical show has other characters that come back to life or miraculously survive lethal wounds.)

The thing is, if someone is not OK with being told who kills Bob, how, when, and why, they're not OK with knowing he dies at all.

No one is going to say "Bob dies? Good thing I don't know the details of his death!". They're going to go "Oh shit, I wish I hadn't read that page before seeing that episode." or "Why isn't there a big spoiler warning at the top of the page?" (and if such a warning is present, then spoiler tags are already unnecessary on the page).

Also, even if the details of the death are spoiler-tagged in the Killed Off for Real example, these details are probably tropes themselves and would therefore be on the page for all to see (for example, Bob would also have Instant Death Bullet and Alice would have one of the Betrayal Tropes if her shooting of Bob is an act of betrayal).

Like I explained in the first post, every instance of a death trope or other plot twist trope on a character sheet is a Self-Fulfilling Spoiler since its position on the page indicates exactly to who the trope applies to.

Are there cases where having spoiler tags on character pages help people not get unnecessarily spoiled? I think if the answer is yes, then that's a good reason to have them. To not have them because some tropes might spoil by their mere presence reeks of Perfect Solution Fallacy to me.

Edited by AnotherDuck on Aug 26th 2018 at 10:41:57 AM

Check out my fanfiction!

Going by this line of thinking, other Spoilers Off pages suchs as "moments" pages and Spoilered Rotten tropes should also use spoiler tags.

That's not an argument for why it wouldn't work on character pages.

Anyway, many "moments" pages do use spoiler tags, and they work well with them. There's generally a higher acceptance for what counts as a spoiler, though (character deaths and major plot twists, mainly), which is necessary to keep everything from being spoiler spoilered out.

Check out my fanfiction!

According to Spoilers Off, moments pages should not have spoiler tags. It's true that many pages do have them, just like how many pages have bad indentation, Zero-Context Examples, etc. Just because it happens often, doesn't mean it's OK.

Also, no one so far has given a good counter-argument about how it's impossible to avoid Self Fulfilling Spoilers on character pages.

Well, should tropes like Killed Off for Real even be used on character pages? After all, it seems like a plot trope, not a characterization trope.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I didn't say it was according to the policy. I said those pages work perfectly fine, and are improved by breaking policy. One rule does not fit all.

Also, using an argument that something is not according to policy and therefore not okay (with no other argument backing it up) is very shifty in a discussion about changing another policy.

Sure, it's impossible to completely avoid some problem with some tropes. However, that's a poor argument for not bothering about everything else. So there's no need to come up with a counter-argument to a specific problem, since that's an edge case not related to common usage. We make policies based on what works the best overall, not what covers absolutely everything anyone could possible conceive.

Check out my fanfiction!

Killed Off for Real is something that happens to a character, so I would think it does go on the character sheet. If it doesn't, and tropes relating to how a character dies don't go on their sheet, that does weaken my position since that would make situations where a trope is a Self-Fulfilling Spoiler much rarer. However, it would also mean that most character pages need a lot of cleanup to remove such tropes from them.

The argument for why moments pages are and should be Spoilers Off is that they talk about things that are almost always a spoiler. If you click on a work's Awesome Moments page, it's because you want to see the work's awesome moments. Why would someone look up a movie's best/funniest/saddest/scariest scenes before watching it, then complain about spoilers? The same thing can be said about character pages: why would you want to see a list of every trope that applies to a character if you don't want to be spoiled?

You're snowballing the argument. The character page is just an extension of the main trope page. It's by definition the same list. By your argument the main trope page shouldn't have spoilers either because no one would want to read a list of tropes to a work if they didn't want to be spoiled.

Since that's evidently false, the argument doesn't hold up.

Take for instance someone who's watched an anime up to the last episode of the last produced season. She goes to read the trope list on one of the pages. And there she finds spoilers from the source material that hasn't been adapted into the anime yet. Do you think it's fine to ruin her experience with the work just because you think people don't read tropes if they don't want to be spoiled?

That's one reason I think moments pages should be sorted chronologically, and preferably foldered for different seasons (or episodes if there are enough examples). It's not a trope list you sort alphabetically.

The point about spoiler markup is to prevent people from accidentally spoiling themselves, and to make as much of the content available to as many people as possible. Different pages have different amounts of tolerance for what can be reasonably assumed to be a spoiler (and obviously, people have different amounts of tolerance). That's why I think it's fine to have some spoiler markup on moments pages.

The balancing point, the way I see it, is how much of the text is hidden by spoiler markup. If there isn't too much, it's fine to have it there.

Lastly, I don't think death is a character trope. It's a plot trope. It's an event.

Check out my fanfiction!

I think of a character page as being similar to a recap page: if you go to a recap page, it's because you want to see everything that happens in the episode. If you click on a character page, it's because you want to know everything about a character. Recap pages can also be considered an extension of the main work page, yet we don't use spoiler tags on them.

A work's main page is different. If someone reads it, it could be that they're curious about what kind of work it is, what themes are featured, the plot structure, etc. You don't necessarily visit a work page because you want to know everything that happens in the work, unlike a character or recap page.

If Killed Off for Real as an example is incorrect, there are other tropes that could work such as Face–Heel Turn. Just seeing that trope on a character sheet spoils that this character becomes evil. If the fact that they turn evil is clearly visible in the trope's name, what's the point of having it hidden right next to it?

It's not that a character page could be considered an extension of the main page. It is an extension of the main page. It's the exact same trope list. Any example that's on one of them should not be on the other, since that would create a duplicate entry.

You may not visit character pages for those reasons. That doesn't mean others don't, so don't claim they don't. As I said, you're evidently wrong about that.

Recap pages are explicitly about specific episodes. That's why they don't have spoiler tags. They're not comparable to pages that cover the entire works from beginning to end.

There's a point to moving plot-spoiler tropes like deaths and heel/face turns to the main page. It both reduces the problems with inherent spoilers on the character pages, and it more clearly makes the character pages about character tropes, not plot tropes that involve specific characters. There's nothing wrong with moving them.

Check out my fanfiction!

Sorry if I am stealing this thread but remind me, why can't we include spoiler tags for trope names? The argument for it should outweigh the risk of spoiling the work on character and work pages likewise. Assumption here is of course, that the user in question is not comparing notes or intending to edit the page as they are only browsing for some confirmation on spoilerless content.

Edited by eroock on Sep 1st 2018 at 4:32:20 PM

The man reason is for the sake of people who are halfway through the work. We'd like for people to be able to tell whether or not it's okay to look under the spoiler tag. For example, if you see a spoiler on the main page under Face–Heel Turn, you know you can probably look at it if you've seen episode 5 where Alice turns evil. If the trope name is spoiled out, you don't know if you can look at it or not.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.

Spoiler tagging the trope name defeats the purpose of spoiler tags. The policy is that an example with spoiler tags should have enough untagged content for the example to make sense without the tagged parts, and it can't make sense without the trope name.

Bigotry in the name of inclusion is still bigotry.

I don't think it defeats the general purpose of spoiler tags. It defeats the more specific one where you want to know exactly what it is that's being spoiled. Which is kind of contradictory in itself.

Anyway, hiding the trope name with spoiler tags shows that it's a spoiler for the work that you probably shouldn't read unless you've finished the work or want to be spoiled. That's enough of a purpose left, which is why I wouldn't say it defeats the purpose of it.

If you want to read spoilers only up until the point where you are, you're already treading a fine line, so if you come across something like that, it's probably something you should avoid. I don't think potentially missing out on one trope that you maybe could've read even if you want to avoid spoilers is anything to bother with.

Check out my fanfiction!

To OP: Your issue of spoilery trope names is not actually confined to character pages. Unprotected tropes like The Hero Dies or Kill Them All on main work pages can spoil the casual reader all the same.

As for the others, I am happy to discuss specific examples for or against why we should not tag trope names together with the content but we also have to see how realistic these scenarios are:

^^^ That example is shaky. For all the user knows, the Face–Heel Turn they spotted may not have been troped yet and what they find underneath is spoiling some other character for them. So they should better stay away from spoiler content until they are finished with the work. We just can't make sure they will find what they assume to find.

^^ That policy makes little sense to me. Here's how I assume the audience is structured (challenge me with your experience). Out of all users browsing a work or characters page:

1. 10% are there without having consumed or intending to consume the work. They fix stuff or make wick checks.
2. 15% have not consumed the work but are planning to.
3. 35% have partly consumed the work.
4. 40% have fully consumed the work.

• Which of those four groups will profit from seeing snippets of a spoilery trope example without knowing who is involved? My answer: None.
• Which of these groups will profit from not seeing a spoilery trope name? My answer: 2 and 3.

The current policy seems to support a user case that I can hardly see existing (but am willing to hear about).

Edit: I remember now there was a technical reason fielded in another thread earlier this year for why trope names should not be included in the spoiler part. When you click and then unclick the spoiler part while your cursor hoovers over the trope name, you are taken to that trope page instead. Unfortunately, this has not been fixed with the overhaul. Test it out here. Nonetheless, a policy on this ground is a too big price paid in my eyes.

Edited by eroock on Sep 1st 2018 at 5:46:59 PM

The last two posts appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of this site's purpose. We're here to trope works, not advertise them, and shielding readers from spoilers is the advertiser's mentality. People who read our articles should understand going in that they may encounter spoilers, especially since people don't all have the same threshold for what constitutes a spoiler.

If I were running this site, I would disable spoiler markup entirely, due to rampant abuse—the same reason strikethrough markup was disabled—and allow inherently spoilery tropes (of which there are fewer than most people think) to be collected in a separate folder at the bottom of the page, but that's just me.

On a related note, it looks to me like the percentages eroock cites were pulled from the air. I have read numerous articles of each of the four types, thanks to the seductive lure of the Wiki Walk, and I have seen no reason to suppose my experience is exceptional.

By the by, there is another aspect of the spoiler policy that bears mention here. Anything that happens in the first half of a work is generally NOT considered a spoiler.

Bigotry in the name of inclusion is still bigotry.

What's the mentality of the staff that implemented and keep up the support for the spoiler tags? I could live without it but was told there are users on here who would appreciate such a feature.

I don't know that I would say that there is one singular mentality among the staff. We all have our opinions on the matter but there's also a certain inertia due to precedent and the fact that there's a huge development backlog.

A lot of people do depend on spoiler tagging to avoid content they don't want to know about, myself among them. That said, I am under no illusion about the potential for spoilers when I read about a work, regardless of how effectively they are tagged. I accept that visiting a work's article and reading the examples risks exposing me to them.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That post reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the previous two posts. Trying to make the site more inclusive rather than exclusive is not "trying to advertise works". Using spoiler tags is a means to be more inclusive to people who want to about tropes but don't want to either wait until they've finished something, or don't want to be accidentally spoiled by other things. Not using spoiler tags at all is an exclusive and selfish mindset that completely tramples on all those people.

Yes, people should understand that they may be spoiled, but not everyone does, and it's not an excuse to just ignore that. It's about being open to as many people as possible. There's always a risk to be spoiled, but other than going offline completely, you can't really avoid it, and I think it's just common courtesy to help people avoid spoilers and minimise the risk (to a reasonable degree, anyway).

Check out my fanfiction!