Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines/Wikipedia:Spoiler warning/What is a spoiler?

What is a spoiler?
Isn't the very declaration that plot point X is a spoiler, and plot point Y is not a spoiler, original research (unless backed up by a reliable source saying "this is a spoiler," which they almost never are) and thus forbidden?

If I didn't know, going in to see Titanic, that Leonardo DiCaprio was in the movie, and I found my enjoyment of the movie heightened by not knowing that until he appeared on screen, should that information be considered a spoiler, and marked as such, to preserve the same potential enjoyment for anyone else who might see the movie?

If I figured out in the first thirty seconds of The Sixth Sense that Bruce Willis's character was dead, and I still enjoyed the movie, does that mean that information isn't a spoiler?

I'm curious to hear from those who support keeping the spoiler tag just how a spoiler is defined, and whether there's any objective, non-OR way to do so, short of marking the entirety of every article on Wikipedia a spoiler. (And before you jump in with "fictional works," keep in mind there are non-fiction books with twist endings whose enjoyment may be reduced by knowing the ending in advance.) Chuck 17:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Titanic was heavily marketed as a Leo DiCaprio film. Sixth Sense was heavily marketed as a film with a twist in the end and is discussed as such in pop culture. That seems to answer those questions. But I'm sure there are grey areas that are best discussed on a case by case basis... Cop 633 17:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * So should a spoiler warning only be applied when a reliable source indicates that the information is a spoiler or twist? That would eliminate probably 99.9% of spoiler warnings in Wikipedia. Chuck 17:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If I o to Wikipedia to look up Sixth Sense, you may rely on the fact that I will want to know what the twist is. If I want to see a teaser which does not give anything away, I'll go to Amazon reviews or a fansite. Guy (Help!) 18:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Might I suggest that there might be others not just in our community but amongst our readership who do not share your personal views on spoilers? I rather disagree that providing spoilersis mollycoddling the reader; it is simply polite to let people know that they may not wish to know specific facts about the movie's plot. Whether a person has been under a rock, or has simply been living in a country where certain movies are either are not permitted to be shown (Cannibal Holocaust in Italy, Borat in Saudi Arabia and 300 in Iran immediately springs to mind). It is not unlikely that someone from one of those countries would want to know what the fuss is about, and still not want to know what the plot details are. Ergo, spoilers prove useful.
 * I agree that the few exceptions which have been brought up as demonstrations of the misapplication of spoiler guidelines are indicative of both the dissent within the community as to the definitions and usefulness of the guideline. Clearly, a great deal of those wishing to 'delete' the guideline are of the opinion that it is also unencyclopedic. I would argue that as an online encyclopedia, some internet conventions have been observed without significant public outcry - including the use of spoilers. It should be noted that the detailing of specific plot twists might actually get us sued. Film reviewers (as well as their parent newspapers) have been held liable for revealing plot twists of recently released films, as it damaged potential box office or DVD sales; we could be treading into this territory as well.
 * If the matter is one of misapplication of the template, then the best course is to educate the community on how to properly apply it. If the issue is that of usefulness, I think that avoiding lawsuits while providing what our readership wants and expects is entirely useful.
 * I think that perhaps the use of the spoiler tag does become stale after time, and its application to films over a certain age shouldn't require them, though I would would not want to hazard what that cut-off date should be. Certainly, spoiler tags shouldn't apply to the B&W King Kong, or other films of that time period. Arcayne   (cast a spell)  20:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Last time I checked we have a spoiler warning linked to every page. Please keep in mind we are an encyclopedia. We do what is best for the article's flow, not shoving select information into select locations, unless the flow of the article dictates that. In any case, I would like to ask, how do we figure out what is and what is not a spoiler? That determination relies on the tagger's point of view. Cheers! ——  Eagle 101 Need help? 20:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * "That determination relies on the tagger's point of view." - and it is in this way that spoilers violate WP:NPOV. --&mdash; Δαίδαλος  Σ  Σ  21:23, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Lead paragraphs vs. spoilers (NPOV)
A lead paragraph should cover all of the major aspects of the article, forming, as Lead paragraph says, a short article unto itself. Some perspectives on texts need to be in the lead paragraph. If these perspectives depend on spoilerish content to be understood then the spoilerish content needs to go there too. The Crying Game has been the example I've been using most often, but there are others: Sue Dibny, Metroid, Taming of the Shrew. All of these have major perspectives on them that are fundamentally based on spoilerish content. These perspectives have to go in the lead, or else NPOV is violated. Phil Sandifer 16:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As per my comments in the above section, the guideline as it currently stands does not interfere with this need. JulesH 18:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * No, the guideline as it currently stands has a tacked on bit saying "o btw don't mess up the article ok". That's pretty clearly just there as a sop to objectors - David Gerard 20:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comedy relief! Someone changes the rules to meet your request and you use this to reprove him? Is there any way to make to happy short of suicide? --87.189.124.195


 * I think it's an untenable position that major plot points (not major critical perspectives) must be included in an introduction, in every case, and so no courtesy to the reader is ever called for. I'll also point out that the "German solution" that's been proposed is quashed by this assertion as well, since it describes "spoiler" information as appearing in sections or discussions of the plot per se. Even in The Crying Game, the facts are that the inclusion of a transvestite character attracted the attention of the LGBT community; and that the marketing of the film was marked by the distributors exhorting reviewers and reporters not to give away the twist. Deciding that our requirement to report these facts translates into "Dil has a weiner!" is just as childish as unencyclopedic as some of the silly examples of overwarning that have been enumerated in this discussion. I would be surprised, in fact, if the introductory section of any other encyclopedia (should it have a specific entry on The Crying Game at all) had this plot detail specifically stated. I would be surprised if this were true for Citizen Kane or any of the other serious examples here were, and have offered a donut--yes, a donut!--to anyone who can show me one. Demi T/C 21:20, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with Demi's position here. It is soemtiems essentiol to include a plot twist or major plot point in the lead paragraph or section of an article. More often it is not important enough to be mentioned there, whether there is a "spoiler" or not. I do agree that in those cases where such information should be mentioned in a lead section, the desire to tag spoilers should take second place. This should be made clearer than it has been, and shold be enforced more consistantly. DES (talk) 22:14, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, if we went by other encyclopedias, from my check on the subject, we'd delete all our film articles or reduce them to stubs. No encyclopedia I could find has summaries at all, spoiler warninged or not. So they're not that helpful a guide here. More broadly, I tend to feel like the major problem is still that consideration of spoilers is getting introduced into the idea of how to write a lead. I largely agree with Demi, inasmuch as I think a good lead will write itself and decide whether a spoiler is essential or not. To that end, I don't think this policy does anything useful - other things, like the general sense of what a good lead and a good article look like, will control this adequately. Adding a spoiler guideline only creates opportunities for misinterpretation. Phil Sandifer 03:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Fuzzy definitions
The lack of clear line between spoiler and non-spoiler is a problem. I'll agree that Spider-Man 3 can validly be spoiled, and that there are good reasons not to discuss its ending right now. (Chief among them - the film is too new to have any critical perspective on its ending, so there's no good way of knowing if it's the most important thing about the film) I'm more skeptical about Spider-Man 2. I'm quite skeptical about Braveheart. And I think the idea of spoiling Birth of a Nation is ludicrous. There's some point at which it's just not sensible to keep shuffling information around. The guideline thus fails because it does not provide a key piece of guidance - when are these tags useful, and when are they not? How can that guidance be provided? Phil Sandifer 16:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Why is the idea of spoiling Birth of a Nation ludicrous? Cop 633 17:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Because the film is nearly a century old. The important things about it are virtually all critical perspective at that point, not its aesthetic experience to a new viewer. To my mind, it's firmly in a category where nobody approaches it blind. Everybody who sees it sees it in the context of its impact and criticism, and so spoiler warnings are beside the point. The question, for me, is where that line gets drawn. I'd say The Godfather is at this point similar to Birth of a Nation, for instance - it's not a film that meaningfully gets approached blind. Phil Sandifer 17:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but that's simply not an objective thing to say. When I watched BoN I didn't know how it was going to end. Indeed, I was rather surprised by its ending. I certainly knew a few things about it - watched it knowing that it would be racist, knowing it glorified the KKK, and knowing that it was the first feature length film. That was all. If your argument is that nobody watches silent movies for the simple aesthetic experience, well you're wrong, mate - some people do. In fact, they should, silent movies are great! And if you're applying that argument to The Godfather ... well, again, you may know the ending, but many people don't. This debate about spoilers is very interesting, and raises important questions, but age of the work is not a factor in the discussion, I believe, and is not an area of 'fuzziness'. Cop 633 17:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hm. I don't think you're really responding to what I'm saying, exactly. This is partially my fault - reading my comment, I was unclear. Let me try again. There comes a point, and I think this point is correlatable with age, though not caused by age, where the critical response to a text becomes more significant than the aesthetic experience of the text itself. That is to say, where an article that is focused on the way in which the text is aesthetically experienced is just the wrong article to have. Romeo and Juliet seems the most dramatically far I can go on this scale - there is just nothing to say in 2007 about that topic that does not assume the ending to be known. It just doesn't make sense to talk about the play in an encyclopedic fashion as an unfolding event, which is what spoiler tags and concerns about spoilers by their nature do. But that's not because of age as such - age just makes it easier for a more fundamental transition in the way the work is received to take place. This is not objective, I'll grant, but I don't see why it has to be either. Phil Sandifer 17:54, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Let us not forget that the reader can infer that they die on the /very first page/. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 18:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think R&J can ever serve as an example for this question. As pointed out before, the ending is plainly told before Act I even begins. The whole work was never meant to be "an unfolding event" the way modern books and movies are. --87.189.124.195


 * You're talking about a very complex question. I think they're necessary when a significant number of editors feel they're necessary.  What's wrong with letting people exercise their judgement? JulesH 18:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I think the point at which "the critical response to a text becomes more significant than the aesthetic experience of the text itself" is not something that can be pinpointed or decided upon by individuals. I'm with you on Romeo and Juliet, but only because, as Melodia points out, their death is expressly stated in the prologue. I dislike the notion that Shakespeare is not alive today as an aesthetic experience. Think of The Tragedy of Cymbeline ... which isn't a tragedy. You might think you know the ending from the title. But you don't, and the surprise can still be thrilling 400 years later. I'm not saying the ending can't be written about, I'm just saying a few warnings are polite. Cop 633 18:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * And I think you are reverting a lot of well-reasoned and good faith edits by a lot of experienced editors, many of them admins. Is there really anyone left in the world who does not know the plot twist in Citizen Kane? Guy (Help!) 18:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Is that a trick question? There are probably five billion people who don't. (Not everyone is born in the USA, imagine that!!) --87.189.124.195


 * Sure it acn be decided by individuals. It's no harder than deciding the relative importance of any two viewpoints in an article. Which arguments go first in Existence of God? Which criticisms of a philosopher go first? We have to make ordered distinctions like this all the time. Phil Sandifer 03:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * When I took a film course at university, no-one had seen Citizen Kane and most knew nothing about it at all. Several had never heard of it. Cop 633 19:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Then they might have benefited from reading our article on Citizen Kane. --Tony Sidaway 19:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * ... whether it contains warning or not. They might even enjoyed the twist ending if it wouldn't. --87.189.124.195


 * The fact that a style guideline requires a judgment call is not grounds for objecting to it. Lots of them do--we are okay with guidelines that call for judgment, trusting that editors will exercise it. And when they don't, and the guideline needs clarity, we can address that, too, by improving it. Demi T/C 21:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, I agree. If anything, I want this guideline to call for more use of judgment, not less. But what bothers me here is that the guideline offers no provision for judgment on this sort of an issue, nor does it make any gesture towards how that judgment might be made. So my question remains: how can we help editors draw this line? Phil Sandifer 03:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree with teh idea that only recent works can be spolied, or that spoiler tage are only appropriate on recent works. I will agree that the more recent the work, the more reason for a tag. I also agree that in the case of very widely know works such as the bible or the plays of Skakespear or the works of Homer, tags are clearly inappropriate. But many people newly read or watch works that are far from new, and may well be wish to avoid spoiler information. Not everery one know all the plot details of every work published more than a few years ago. Particuarlly with works that are nor recent, but are also no very widely known, spoiler tags may well be appropriate. DES (talk) 22:11, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Sure. I mean, I don't pretend there's a bright line distinction. I hate bright line distinctions, in fact. Never found one on Wikipedia that was any real use. (Except maybe the 3RR) Hardly anybody seems to seriously believe Hamlet needs a spoiler tag. And I think almost everybody can accept that when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out, there will be some reason to segregate spoilers from the main text for a bit, though whether a tag is appropriate is an open question. But between that is a world of discussible points, and I think some guidance on navigating that world is in order. Phil Sandifer 03:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * First of all, I think the idea that everyone knows how a particular work of fiction ends is just wrong. I do know a lot more about films than most people around me, and I see significant movies for the first time all the time (eg. last week Yojimbo from 1961). I could think of major literary works that I don't know faster than I could write them down. The whole notion that a certain work can be considered known by anyone is just unfounded arrogance.
 * The whole argument is IMHO something of a red herring. There are lot worse problems than these spoilers to decide (eg. who started WWI, how many people died in the Holocaust), and Wikipedia copes quite well. Does the fact that Laura Palmer is murdered merits a warning? Does the name of the murderer? These questions can be answered trivially most of the time, and after some deliberation in the remaining cases. --87.189.124.195