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See this thread and this ATT. While you can add tropes for 'advance' installments, we don't currently have an umbrella policy for when and how to add them. However, some fandoms have come to agreements; for example, contributors for RWBY have agreed not to trope content until it's free to the public.
EDIT: I'll link these two AT Ts in the Wiki Talk thread for easier finding.
Edited by SynchronicityI'm gonna nitpick about the wording and point out that if it's available for a fee, then it is in fact "publicly available", since the public can pay to see it, just like with movies in theaters for instance.
^ That's true, but the issue is that it limits who can keep an eye on the pages. If most of the tropers who want to keep those pages clean aren't subscribers, then they can't follow those pages without fear of spoilers.
This happened with NightmareFuel.RWBY: some RT First tropers kept adding really bad examples to the page, and none of the people who were interested in cleanup were subscribers so the examples stayed up for a whole week before being removed, sending the impression that they were okay. Eventually, it got so bad that the page had to be locked.
That can happen with any property on the wiki though, if only a couple of people are interested in it, are in possession of out of print material, or care enough about it to get behind the paywall, then we can get bad entries on anything. We always rely on people caring enough to fix or report, and that is not always gonna be possible in the short term.
I hate the business model, but it is technically publicly available and should be treated as no different than any other commercially released work.
^^^^ Synchronicity, thank you for linking those earlier discussions. I was sure this question had been asked previously but I was having a difficult time searching out a precedent. At present, it seems like there isn't a policy in place or stylistic guidance from the wiki?
With the rise of sites offering early access subscriptions and premium "read ahead" options on digitally published media (some webcomics and livestreams and the like), I'm wondering if we have a policy regarding when tropes can be added to a works page. Should tropers wait to add and update tropes on a works page until the source material is publicly available? Or is it okay to add and update tropes as long as the edits are behind a spoiler tag?