Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines/Wikipedia:Spoiler warning/Proposals to hide spoilers

Spoiler Warning Picture/Logo and Option
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere, but wouldn't a small icon at the top right of an article (where the edit-protection logo goes) be an appropriate solution to this problem? I don't know how far the wiki markup language goes, but maybe even tagging sections or subsections of the article with a spoiler tag and being able to show or hide spoilers by clicking this image at the top right of the screen. Even a preset in user options? My own view is that spoiler warnings are irrelevant in an encyclopaedia. It is analagous to a forum I read often, users complain when people talk about the latest episode in the "Official Heroes Thread" after the episode has aired. Spoilers are to be expected when you read about something. I feel that the spam usage of spoiler warnings in wikipedia is detrimental to the quality of articles. – ARC Gritt 14:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ugh... so come up with spoiler levels? David Fuchs 15:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by "levels", I am just changing the way they are handled by the wiki software. At the moment, a large banner is placed before and after the section which contains spoilers. I am proposing that instead of these banners, the section be tagged as a section which contains spoilers. By default, the article would show all spoilers, and look like a normal article. However, if the user has selected in their preferences to hide spoilers, each section containing spoilers would be collapsed, like the option in some templates, and have a button which reveals the section. In addition, the page would have a logo at the top right which indicates the presence of spoilers in the article.– ARC Gritt 15:28, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds more like a plan for censorship, which is against Wikipedia's policies (WP:NOT). And yes, hiding information because a reader could find it objectionable is a form of censorship. --Farix (Talk) 15:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The argument put for by the pro-spoiler contingent is that the spoiler warning is there to protect readers because the reader way not be conscious enough to realize that an encyclopedia article will contain spoilers. So how is a small icon going to accomplish that? --Farix (Talk) 15:21, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * A big icon then. The main point is that the text and quality of the article is not affected by the fact that some people do not want to accidently read spoilers. – ARC Gritt 15:28, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Again, who does an image protect an reader from spoilers? --Farix (Talk) 15:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

This suggestion is absolutely unacceptable. --Tony Sidaway 15:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Very unacceptable. We can't have ANYthing that would allow "sectioning off" spoiler text -- because it just usually makes the article have to be /written around/ that text, and just makes it worse. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 16:14, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

A nice suggestion for consensus. Give an option to a user.
Why not give user an option to turn spoilers on/off? It is possible even now with monobook.css (.spoiler {display: none;}), why not make that setting available in preferences and turn it on or off by default, as voted? I believe I understand people who think that spoilers ruin encyclopedic text, but please understand people like me. I do not care about that encyclopedic show-off, but I am very sad, when the article spoils my fun. It is not the purpose of WP. --Akral 15:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I have expanded on your suggestion with more detail and argument below. The question of which option should be default is easily decided, as I explain.—greenrd 23:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You could not read articles about films that you have not seen if you don't want information about them (the spreading of information or knowledge is the purpose of Wikipedia, not the hiding of stuff that you don't want to see). Kusma (talk) 15:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Great advice. Especially for people who does peer reviews and likes to contribute to featured article status. -- ReyBrujo 15:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * If you can't even read the whole article because you're afraid of spoiling something, don't bother doing a peer review or trying to help make the article better for FA. You won't be helping.  Articles need to stand together as a single unit, and it makes no sense for someone to be editing or review one section in depth without even having read the whole thing.  -- Cyde Weys  16:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Kusma, you are deconstructive. Of I course I can just not read the articles. I can simply stop using WP. But what are you responding to? To a suggestion of giving an option? Does this mean you do not consider it as a possible solution? That makes you a terrorist, you do not try to understand others. :P --Akral 15:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Please don't call other editors terrorists for expressing their point of view - this is not being civil, as you should have known. Better words to convey the same thing in this context would be "unreasonable" or "completely unreasonable" or something like that.—greenrd 23:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * By the way, I read about films/animes I want to watch to know, if I really should watch them. Do I like the filming/drawing style, what actors are there, etc. What's wrong with that? --Akral 15:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Some people, like me, look up movie articles to see what the movie is about (e.g. an overview). The last time I did this, I read the lead, and then, right below that was a spoiler tag, so I looked no further. The tag is not hiding anything itself, but allows the user to regulate what he/she reads. --Temporarily Insane (talk) 15:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * We cannot do anything about people who are stupid enough to look up articles that they know contain information they don't want. Wikipedia is intentionally designed to deliver information, not to conceal it. Other sites may be more suitable for your purpose.  --Tony Sidaway 16:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Calling other editors "stupid" is unacceptable on Wikipedia. See WP:NPA. --agr 17:12, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't dream of calling Temporarily Insane stupid. I was referring only to those who know that they don't want to know something but nevertheless insist on reading about the subject. Now that is perverse and stupid.  --Tony Sidaway 18:15, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You have just called me perverse and stupid. I believe one should be ignored in any discussions, if he can't respect other opinions. --Akral 18:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of calling you perverse and stupid. If I have, or have given the appearance of doing so, I withdraw the offending comment and apologise. My opinion on the perversity and stupidity of reading about a subject the knowledge of which would cause one discomfort, however, stands.  --Tony Sidaway 19:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I have explained it before already, but let me give a real life exmample this time. Once I have finished watching Oban anime series, I was wondering, what to watch next. After browsing the web, I found out a possible candidate: Avatar: The Last Airbender. I am interested in it, but up to the point. I want to know how is it drawn, what is it about, what its genre is, what are the cultural references, to evaluate, should I watch it or not, but I do not want to know, if their journey is successful, who gets killed or who is the Bad Guy (c). Spoiler helped me a lot, because, while of course, I skipped Premise and Plot Synopsis sections, I thought, that it would be great to know about the Characters. Yet I was stopped by a red light – a spoiler. Hadn't it been there, I would lose some share of fun. Why? Simply because somebody finds spoilers unencyclopedic. Simply because somebody thinks, we have limited disk space and one word Spoiler would fill our quota.
 * Now since I was "reading about a subject the knowledge of which would cause one discomfort" and that is "perversity and stupidity", I am perverse and stupid.
 * Is it that hard to open your monobook.css and add .spoiler{display:none}? Or we could make all spoilers hidden by default and people who want, would add .spoiler{display:block}, but why delete them altogether? --Akral 19:38, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm writing an encyclopedia, not a guide to anime. Whether we should include spoiler tags in encyclopedia articles on these subjects is a valid question.  You don't get to dodge the question by asking me to mess with my css settings.


 * Now as luck would have it, our article on Avatar: The Last Airbender has a spoiler tag that is way, way high up on the article, and if you don't read past it you'll miss all kinds of setting information that cannot possibly be described as plot spoilers. There is a plot synopsis section which is clearly marked, but this is much lower down.  Of course the character section necessarily describes the characters in terms of the way they're drawn and what happen in the plot.  This is probably because with most fictional works there is absolutely nothing else to write about the characters.  You're  unlikely to find a work on this anime that describes the characters without saying who is the bad guy, because (of course!) the bad guy is one of the characters.
 * If you did read about a subject the knowledge of which would cause our discomfort, and I'll take your word for it, then that was indeed a perverse and stupid thing to do. It isn't wikipedia's problem.  It's yours.  You must take responsibility for it. --Tony Sidaway 20:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * People are not perfectly rational beings - don't be so hyper-critical. Secondly, even if they were, you're not distinguishing between the knowledge of which and some knowledge of which, which makes your argument sophomoric. I want to know some knowledge about a film before I watch it, but not all types of knowledge. That is an elementary distinction.—greenrd 23:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Solving a problem by asking users to change preferences or their css pages is a bad idea. If we encourage that, we encourage people to war over what the default behavior is. Trust me, you don't want to start encouraging edit wars on the MediaWiki pages or Template:Spoiler or any other pages. This issue should be solved either with a project-wide guideline on spoiler usage or discussion on individual pages. --- RockMFR 20:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)