Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines/Wikipedia:Spoiler warning/Archive 5

False sense of security?
Not to jump in all late and everything, but it seems that one of the main reasons we don't use other kinds of disclaimers is because it gives the impression that we'll always have one. So if we say "don't try this at home" in one article but not another, people assume the other article is okay to try at home. (With the proliferation of warning labels on household products, I pretty much assume any household chemical is okay to drink if the label doesn't tell me I'll die.) If we have spoilers in some articles but not others, or in some sections but not others, this situation is much more confusing. If I see spoiler warnings on Wikipedia in character sections but not lead sections or plot sections, I might well assume that those other sections don't contain spoilers--or else they'd have the warnings too.

That said, I'm not passionate about removing spoiler warnings, because I barely notice them. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The same "argument" could be used against, , , and other such warning templates. It's not a valid argument against those and it's not valid against spoiler warnings either. Just because some crappy amateur articles aren't marked up with spoiler warnings, doesn't mean we shouldn't have spoiler warnings on, say, articles about recently-released films with surprising plot twists.—greenrd 21:55, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Not exactly-- and suchwhat are maintenance templates as much as anything.  They don't serve merely to warn the reader, but to call editors into action.  They say something here needs fixed.  That's something different from a spoiler warning, which isn't intended to be removed once the article is improved. NickelShoe (Talk) 13:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Boredom and prose
I'm getting bored with the debate. That said, the actual prose of the spoiler guideline needs improvement; it's somewhat bloated. I took a half-baked pass, but it needs more. &mdash; Deckiller 21:47, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a call for people to take their own passes on the prose of the guideline. Please ensure that the wording is optimal. &mdash; Deckiller 23:47, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions
Well, I figure we're not getting anywhere by debating the use and purpouse of the tags, so how about some suggestions? Suggestions about what action to take, draft guidelines and the like, and we can see how everyone feels towards these, because this is turing into an endless cycle.AndyTheSkanker (talk) 22:25, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That's been going on for a while at WP:SPOIL. We put the guideline live last night, and it's so far been doing OK. Phil Sandifer 22:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, my bad, but if anyone wants to suggest any alterations to these or anything?AndyTheSkanker (talk) 22:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia talk:Spoiler? 23:18, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I do like the fact that it states editors need compelling and justifiable reasons before including spoiler warnings in an article rather then using spoiler warnings as a "security blanket" because someone's enjoyment of a work might be diminished. --Farix (Talk) 23:36, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was off on removing "compelling"; although I agree that the arguments better be compelling, I was just trying to be preemptive because of the strong oppositions to the current wording. I over analyzed. &mdash; Deckiller 00:23, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * One thing I didn't understand the inclusion of was that spoiler tags must not impede the neutral stancepoint of an article. I just don't see how a spoiler which would normally be something to the effect of plot and/or ending details, could effect neutrality, however, that's just what I think.AndyTheSkanker (talk) 01:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The neutrality aspect is about whether the detail or ending is significant enough to "ruin" the reader's experience if the reader knows about the detail ahead of time. --Farix (Talk) 01:19, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, for instance the article lead will be unbalanced if you don't happen to mention that Julius Caesar is the victim of a plot to assassinate him in the senate. Major plot elements should be covered thoroughly in the body text, if such coverage is merited in the type of article.  --Tony Sidaway 01:30, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) It's a Catch-22. It violates WP:NPOV when editors identify certain plot points as "ruining" the reader/viewers experience if it was known ahead of time. (I also think it potentially violates WP:V as it has to be verifiable that knowledge of the plot point beforehand will ruin the experience.) So the tags are used indiscriminately as "security blanket" for the entire plot. This, however, is an abuse of what the spoiler tags were meant for. --Farix (Talk) 01:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It no more violates NPOV than putting things in paragraphs or having external links does. It's purely a question of style and readability. Is it violating NPOV when there are 'early life' sections in biographies, since editors will have to make a judgement?-- Nydas (Talk) 07:43, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

We need a spoiler
Sorry if my opinion seems bland, but I think a spoiler warning is necessary. I know this is an encyclopedia, but I believe in the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" philosophy. I'm happy with the process, so I don't want to have the spoiler template ditched. - User:Blakegripling_ph


 * Hear, hear. Sure, the process does have its flaws, but in my experience it's preferable to alternatives.  RobbieG 12:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I absolutely agree. Templates also grab attetion while reading through an article, and someone might not realise that what he/she is reding is a spoiler. It is also a proven fact that some people are complete morons and can't put 2 and 2 together. Proof: . It's from a popular TV show in Australia. The spoiler template should remain even if the heading says summary, background, etc., etc..--Iamcon 11:12, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

*cough*
Maybe when you guys are over polling one another you might like to come and look at our spoiler guideline: Spoiler. --Tony Sidaway 22:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * our spoiler guideline . Isn't it meant to be the Wikipedia guideline  .Garda40 11:52, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In fairness, I think that's what he meant.—greenrd 16:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You could stand to be polite in your victory. It wouldn't cost you much. --Kizor 07:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * OMG! WILL THIS EVER STOP! JUST DO ONE FINAL POLL AND LOCK THE F@#@# DEBATE! *apologies for uncivility*Quatreryukami 02:42, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It will only end when the cabal wants it to end. Uhhh... I mean ... there is no cabal daniel  folsom  03:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Poll ∞ - can we stop with the polls?
Support :P Sheesh! This is getting ridiculous. If certain people didn't get the results they wanted in one poll, they shouldn't decide to hold as many polls as possible to find one that will support their point of view. Can we move on, perhaps work with existing fiction wikiprojects to improve the style of existing plot synopses and get on with the job? I empathise with those above who are getting pregressively more irritated with this silly exercise in wikidemocracy. Besides, many people who do use Wikipedia don't even contribute to the encyclopedia and aren't aware of this poll, so how can we find out what their preference is in relation to spoiler warnings? Brisv e  gas  09:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * We do not change policy by voting, so the polls aren't constructive anyway. You'll note that many people who have been discussing here haven't voted in the polls. Kusma (talk) 10:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Polls can and do change policy indirectly. For example, in this situation polls have demonstrated a serious lack of consensus. If the polls were lopsided for or against, that would suggest WP:Snow and one side or another would tend to melt away.
 * Many polls are useful in determining exactly what policy to propose. One of the constructive aspects is that polls organize comments as a groups, so it becomes more easily possible to find common threads around which to ask more refined poll questions. More refined poll questions hopefully will highlight the key elements, rather than trivia, around which a compromise can be fashioned. Milo 17:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

We don't need any of this
Thousands of spoiler tags have been removed from the Wiki over the past few days, from articles spanning the spectrum from unpopular to highly popular. Very few spoiler tags have been put back. There hasn't been a steady stream of complaints, there hasn't been any disruption except for the odd lone edit warrior "saving the wiki" by pointlessly replacing tags in the face of multiple editors removing them.

Therefore I suggest that there is no problem to solve. No reason to make up clever software hacks to make spoiler tags visible or invisible according to preference, no need to worry about the hyper-sensitive reader, so loud and voluble on the wiki but so rare in email complaints, who insists on reading an article about a subject but demands that we disclose only part of the information up front, even if this compromises our Neutral point of view policy.

Let's have an end to all that. The massive overuse of spoiler tags on Wikipedia is unnecessary, lets give most of them a decent burial. Those that are used must be justified explicitly on the talk page and never again placed on an article against consensus. The justification must explain why the core policies of Wikipedia are not compromised by the use of spoiler tags in each instance where they are used.

We must never again have a situation where one can emerge from an article about the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar without a clear knowledge that it is about an assassination conspiracy, or from The Crying Game without a keen understanding of its sensitive treatment of minority sexualities, or from The Sixth Sense without (for instance) an understanding of the role of the color red in Shyamalan's cinematography. Critical information must not be hidden. This isn't an internet forum, it's an encyclopedia. --Tony Sidaway 23:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, asking people to prove a negative. Ken Arromdee 03:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * never again placed on an article against consensus


 * Perhaps we could have an actual consensus first to remove them as well.After all in the long term if they were removed next week after an actual consensus was reached it wouldn't make much difference


 * Critical information must not be hidden.
 * Nobody is asking for critical information to be hidden just to point out to the reader, who might have got there randomly , the fact that you may spoil your enjoyment of the book,film etc  if you continue to look at the article .Position the warning as appropriate to the article .Garda40 23:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I concur. It's not hiding the vital information, as this information may be displayed, as for the argument about casual users no understanding, why not for the first week or so, on people's first visit to the site since, have them redirected for a couple of seconds to an explanation then back to the article they requested? And as for the question of hidden or no by default, why not hidden but members, as with many things, have the choice?
 * AndyTheSkanker (talk) 01:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If the existence of a spoiler tag on "Plot" in the Romeo and Juliet article makes an editor reluctant to state in the opening section that the lovers commit suicide and that this is the agency of their families' reconciliation, then vital information is hidden. One should not have to delve into the innards of an article to understand the subject matter.


 * As for consensus to remove, this has existed for several days now but we're just waiting for the discussion to catch up with events. --Tony Sidaway 01:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no consensus to remove. Ken Arromdee 03:36, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Then try this on for size, if you had no consensus to include the warning, then why would consensus be required to remove it? -- Ned Scott 06:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Technically, by WP:CONSENSUS, apathy is generally a sign that consensus takes place. Consensus that they should be there existed until recently. We're now at a deciding stage, at which point the new consensus has not yet been reached. You Can't See Me! 07:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It is my observation that the requisite level of apathy for consensus has been established empirically by many thousands of edits. --Tony Sidaway 07:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strange when there wasn't apathy in adding them back by some editors you said this  Oh that's just one guy putting the spoiler tag back. He'll stop or be stopped soon enough 
 * So your idea of consenus seems to consist of nobody's putting them back and if they do we'll stop them. Nice consensus .Garda40 14:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed, there has been apathy over the removal of spoiler tags, including apathy of my own. Pardon me for excluding that tidbit; I was thinking in terms of the discussion rather than the edits for that last part. You Can't See Me! 07:16, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The trouble is that this still amounts to "if you don't revert thousands of edits right now, that proves nobody cares about them". Do you realize how much work it is for one person to revert thousands of edits without being obsessive-compulsive?
 * Not to mention that most people who are annoyed by a spoiler warning and aren't aware of this RFC would just think that it's a bad article in the same way that articles with bad grammar, no references, etc. are bad. I'm sure we have thousands of those, but the fact that people don't fix them doesn't prove they should stay. Ken Arromdee 13:28, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Let me add: to edit 5000 articles, and take a minute to do each, amounts to over 83 hours. That's more than two weeks of making it a full time job to do nothing other than put spoiler warnings back in Wikipedia (and some people already have full time jobs).  To imply that there is consensus to remove spoiler warnings because nobody does this is simply absurd. Ken Arromdee 13:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That's sorta' the point. One person reverting does not a consensus make. In order for there to be a conensus, a large party of users either has to encourage the reversion or do nothing. As of now, that arrow largely points to "do nothing" when spoiler tags are removed.  You Can '  t See Me!  17:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

So you're seriously suggesting that because a "large party of users" doesn't try to revert 5000 changes, that proves there's consensus for the changes? Ken Arromdee 18:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Not just the fact that very few have been reverted, but that there have been very few complaints of any kind. I think it demonstrates that this really isn't the hot-wire issue that some people in this discussion seem to think it is. --Tony Sidaway 18:25, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Allow me to clarify: There may not be definite consensus at all, but the general apathy over the removal on most articles is congruent with Wikipedia's version (for lack of a better word) of consensus.  You Can '  t See Me!  01:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I would be surprised to learn that any serious encyclopedia includes "spoiler warnings." Leads that fail to summarize the most important points of the article are uninformative and violate the Manual of style.Proabivouac 00:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Tony Sidaway I don't want to come off as contentious but please re-think your assertion that apathy amounts to consensus for two reasons. 1) Not commenting does not mean an editor is apathetic. I see many issues and discussions I care about but do not comment on simply because I don't want to become involved for any number of reasons (Time, number of editors commenting, etc.). 2) Lack of a negative does not prove a positive, we have no idea what the editors who aren't commenting think about spoiler warnings. It's my understanding that consensus is achieved through a request for community comment on the issue at hand. (It should also be understood that time can change a consensus.) Anynobody 23:42, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Wrong question. Need to improve "plot summaries"
I love spoiler tags because I like to avoid reading story-teller wannabes recalling a story scene-for-scene, one sound-effect at a time, complete with visual gags and irrelevant-to-the-plot details. Here's one particularly poor attempt from "The Return of Chef" South Park episode:


 * "Oh my God! They killed Chef!" "You bastards!". Cartman suggests that Chef may not be dead because "They say the last thing you do before you die is crap your--" At that instant, Chef's body empties its bowels, and the boys leave the scene, dismayed that their friend is apparently dead.

More "serious" films get the same shoddy treatment. Example from Cast Away:


 * The woman sending the package, an artist in a welder's suit, tells the driver she will have another one for him to take that coming Thursday. We see the package delivered all the way to a residence in Moscow, Russia, to a man in a cowboy hat and robe. A Russian woman who is with the man, apparently on intimate terms, asks, "Who is it from?". He replies, "My wife".

These examples explain detail that is largely irrelevant to the story. I didn't look far for these two examples. They're just the last two things I watched and looked up. There's no twist that is spoilt in these examples (the second example is from an opening scene), instead the story itself is ruined by a poor retelling.

Do we need "spoiler" tags to warn the reader that there's a terribly written "synopsis" following? No, we need better written plot summaries. My two cents. —Pengo 01:07, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This is why I've been bothered by the "security blanket" approach to spoiler warnings that was used until lately. It's a lazy way for editors to avoid identifying specific points and make compelling arguments that the point will cause a film or work to be "ruined" when the viewer, listener, or reader learns of the point beforehand. But then, I also thing there are better ways of handling these points without surrounding them with {spoiler}. --Farix (Talk) 01:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, of course we do! It's quicker to mass-tag as "spoiler" than it is to actually think about how to rewrite the badly-written plot sections (which might involve actually watching the movie). It's silly to expect someone to do the latter for each article which has spoiler problems - it's a huge amount of work.—greenrd 10:02, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I think Pengo's point was that rather than slapping a spoiler warning on the section instead this trivia and extreme level of minutiae should be removed from the prose as it's irrelevant to the overall plot summary anyway. And to add my two cents: we are here to write articles correctly, not try to use "quick fixes".  Don't be lazy, some articles are a lot of work to clean them up, that's just the way it is.  --&mdash; Δαίδαλος  Σ  17:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not about being "lazy", whatever that means in the context of Wikipedia editing. I understand the point you are making, but please do not use such a pejorative word as "lazy" for this absolutely normal and standard editing practice (see Template_messages/Cleanup for other examples). By analogy: if I see that a non-fiction article relating to say, brain surgery, contains some dubious claims and is completely unreferenced, would I attempt to rewrite the article!? No, I don't feel comfortable doing that, because I know nothing about brain surgery - so I would tag it with an appropriate tag template to warn the readers and other editors, such as . The same goes for seemingly badly-written plot sections in articles on literature and movies that I know nothing about. I might just tag them "spoiler warning"; or I might tag as both "spoiler warning" and "this section needs a complete rewrite" , depending on my level of confidence, and my interest in the topic.—greenrd 18:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Except that a spoiler warning ISN'T there to say "rewrite this" or "cite this" like those tags are. They are expected to 'stay' instead. A huge difference. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 18:57, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand that, but the original point was that spoilers are sometimes only there because of excessively-detailed plot summaries. My point is that, in such cases, adding a spoiler warning is better than no edit at all - it's not at all like in Biographies of Living Persons where we are supposed to go "Oh no! An unsourced contentious claim! Must immediately remove it!" Overlong plot summaries are not life-threatening, they are not a high priority item either legally or personally, from my point of view. And sometimes I am not sure whether a particular spoiler would be included or not in a really good writeup of the subject of the article, but I'm pretty sure that it is a spoiler. Sorry to have to spell all this out - it seems like it should be obvious, but I'm not sure that it's obvious to everyone in this discussion.—greenrd 19:10, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It is not obvious, because a good, concise plot summary still outlines the main twists and other spoilers. Using a spoiler tag for cleanup doesn't solve anything, because a succinct overview still spoils. Moreover, spoiler-less plot summaries are like back-of-the-book advertisements or hooks, which are unacceptable on Wikipedia. &mdash; Deckiller 16:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Besides, there are already other tags to tell editors that a section needs cleanup, trimming or copy-editing. Use those tags, not a spoiler tag.  --&mdash; Δαίδαλος  Σ  00:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)