On 5/31/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Net outcome: If your article needs {{spoiler}},
it's defective enough
it may as well be tagged {{cleanup}}.
Is that a change to the guideline, or just your reading of the
apparent consensus on the talk page? I'd obviously rather remove my
own toenails than read the entire discussion, but I don't want to be
totally ignorant.
David is exaggerating. However, many of Wikipedia's articles on
fiction go into mind-numbing plot detail, thanks to an army of
contributors each of which has a little bit more to add (or, in some
cases, one obsessed fan).
It's a real pity that I feel so strongly at odds
with consensus. That
hasn't happened for me with Wikipedia before. I do feel that there is
a place for spoiler warning tags on most articles about fictional
subjects, and I don't accept that "a plot summary inherently contains
spoilers so don't read it if you don't want the spoilers".
For me, the convincing argument is that such warnings are nigh-on
never used in reference works elsewhere. Spoiler warnings everywhere
were AFAIK a Usenet invention.
Of course, we're not necessarily bound by precedent, but that
precedent does make me believe that spoiler warnings have to justify
themselves rather convincingly.
-Matt