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I'm not a moderator, though hopefully one will come along soon and offer input. But while there doesn't seem to be anything on the Discussion page about this decision (in fact, there's nothing on the Discussion page at all), the edit history for the page seems to point toward massive overuse of spoiler tags; they were used in more than half the entries on the page, sometimes hiding the entire description except for a few words (or not even as much as that). Pages that have reached that extreme before have sometimes been declared Spoilers Off as long as an "UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD!" warning is put at the top of the page, simply because the sheer volume of material in spoiler tags defeats the purpose of a wiki page to convey information. To quote Handling Spoilers, "We know it seems important to fans of a given work, but the far and away majority of readers are not people with a fannish mindset at all. We who edit are mostly fannish, but the people who edit are less than 1% of the people who read the wiki. Let's continue to write for the casual reader. It is our best way to convert them to fans."
Again, though, not a mod.
I can't disagree with the overuse of spoiler tags, but just cutting them altogether still feels too extreme. We can just go in and clean them up; I'm sure a lot of them can work just fine if only a few key words were hidden instead of the whole entry.
Alternately, I know that several trope entries have to do with The Stinger. Since it's such a tonal shift away from the rest of the movie, why not give those tropes their own folder and allow unmarked spoilers there, instead of the whole page?
Edited by DragonRanger
Yes, I disagree with making recently released movies Spoilers Off without a really good reason. For that matter, why does Characters.The Incredibles start by saying, "Spoilers for both The Incredibles and Incredibles 2 will be left unmarked"? I could understand not marking spoilers for the first movie that are Late Arrival Spoilers for the sequel, but it seems extreme and kind of inconsiderate to not mark any spoilers for the recently-released sequel, at least in sections for characters that debuted in the first movie.
Edited by rjd1922 Keet cleanup
This sounds like something that would need discussion on the discussion page.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
@Dragon Ranger: "Alternately, I know that several trope entries have to do with The Stinger. Since it's such a tonal shift away from the rest of the movie, why not give those tropes their own folder and allow unmarked spoilers there, instead of the whole page?"
This is why not: because that violates multiple wiki style guidelines on how to organise tropes on a page. Whatever the nature of tropes used in a work, they are put in one place and alphabetised. They are not sorted into categories. Doing that makes them needlessly difficult to find and encourages the addition of duplicate entries.
It's definitely poor style to Spoilers Off an article for a recently released film. Better to hide ending spoilers only.
Edited by Fighteer "It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Someone PM P Strider Fan this discussion. They were also the troper who made a bunch of arbitrary Infinity War subpages.
Edited by JRads47
So will we revert back to spoilers or leave the page as it is?
Bumping to second JRads' question. And if we're putting them back, can a mod please restore the version before the removal?
Recommending a third option if the page's Spoilers Off status is scrapped: don't put it back as it was before the removal, because the amount of material in spoiler tags was frankly absurd. Scale it back. Raise the bar for what is considered a spoiler if needed; some editors seem to treat anything after the title of a film as a spoiler. The point of a wiki page is to convey information, not to hide it behind a wall of white.
Edited by mlsmithca
I mean, of course it needs to be scaled back. My thinking was it'd be easier to do with the spoiler-tagged version; that way we can just look at the items that do have tags and make adjustments rather than go through every single trope on the page to see if they need tags added.
Yesterday, PStriderFan went through Ant-Man and the Wasp and changed it to Spoilers Off; removing all spoiler tags and adding a "spoilers are unmarked" warning at the top. Was that officially decided on anywhere? Because it doesn't feel right to me. I wanted to check before I did anything — and honestly, if spoilers should be put back, then it'd be quicker to have a mod do a restore.
For the record, Avengers: Infinity War is also Spoilers Off, though I can understand that one given how spoiler-heavy the film is. I still figured I'd bring it up just in case.