Wikipedia talk:Spoiler/Archive 13

This is, on occasion, a very busy discussion page. Newcomers are encouraged to read the copious archives.

There is a discussion on the archiving of this page at Wikipedia talk:Spoiler/Archiving debate

TFD

L337 kybldmstr has started another TFD discussion on the template at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Spoiler. Kusma (talk) 08:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The TFD is emblematic of the paradox surrounding this issue. The pro-SW crowd will argue loudly that the template is useful...but it isn't being used anywhere. Perhaps it should be. But it isn't. Marc Shepherd 14:15, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

It isn't being used anywhere? And why is that? Because you keep removing it? Oh, I see. I can think of a way for notices to possibly go without detection for a while, but has it really come to that? --Pixelface 08:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I remain baffled why Template:Current fiction isn't a desirable replacement. Phil Sandifer 14:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

For SW proponents to embrace {{current fiction}}, they'd need to accept the idea that the need for SWs is temporal: works that are no longer current (however you define that term) would never have SWs. My sense (anecdotally) is that the vast majority of the concerns are addressed if recent works are tagged, but many SW proponents hold out the hope that SWs will return on pages like Psycho.

The other issue some people have with {{current fiction}} is that it tags the whole article, and therefore, doesn't distinguish between spoiler content and general information. Ironically, though, most editors tend to put {{spoiler}} on the entire plot anyway, and pro-SW editors have never been able to agree what constitutes a spoiler.

{{Current fiction}} has not been used anywhere near as much as it should be. At this moment, it's only on 19 articles. There are some design changes that could make it a lot easier to use; for instance, there should be easy-to-use versions for films, TV series, and so forth. I also think that {{current fiction}} gets removed far too quickly. It should stick around for a year or two, rather than a month or two. Marc Shepherd 15:13, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I think shorter is better on its duration, but yes - it's a far superior tag. For one thing, by encompassing the entire article it admits to the ludicrousness of segregating spoilers. Phil Sandifer 15:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I can contribute one data point on duration of {{current fiction}} tagging. When the latest Harry Potter novel came out, tagging for spoilers was rejected as a result of discussion, and "current fiction" was accepted. After further discussion, that tag was kept on the article until just over a month after the novel's first English language publication. The latest talk page discussion on the matter is here. Spoiler tags have been added once or twice since then but they are immediately removed. --Tony Sidaway 19:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Point of historical interest -- when the last Harry Potter book came out, some commercial newspapers included "spoiler warnings" which looked suspiciously like an old version of this template in their web articles. - Revolving Bugbear (formerly Che Nuevara) 22:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but such spoiler warnings are common on the internet. The issue here seems to be that we have outgrown the need to defer to our internet origins. --Tony Sidaway 23:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

You will find that when newspapers did this (and not all did), they were spoiler-protecting only the most recent book. The warnings were helpful only to those who'd read the first six books, but not the seventh. And the warnings were present for only a limited period of time. The newspaper warnings were, in essence, fulfilling a similar function to our {{current fiction}} template. Marc Shepherd 00:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The #1 reason why I nominated the template for deletion is that Wikipedia:Content disclaimer explicitly states "Wikipedia contains spoilers." Which means we don't even need the template in the first place, since it only repeats what that disclaimer says. L337 kybldmstr 23:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes, the content disclaimer... That document that every reader knows by heart since it's tucked away at the bottom of every page and is only 2 links away from every article. I'm sure everyone here could sing along to it without even looking at it. Being so well-known and all... --Pixelface 09:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it's significant that during my early days on Wikipedia in late 2004 and early 2005, I happened to witness the death of a movement to place content disclaimers on articles containing potentially upsetting pictures. The discussion on Talk:Clitoris was particularly interesting.

That discussion went very strongly against the principle that Wikipedia articles should include such disclaimers as part of their content. One editor who persistently edit-warred over the inclusion of a photograph of a human vulva was ordered by the Committee to stop doing so.

We are creating an encyclopedia. Our version of the encyclopedia will dispense information according to our tenets of neutral point of view, verifiability, no original research and so on.

Those who want to dilute that to taste, or insert disclaimers into the content, or to strive in any other way to improve it, are welcome to copy the content on terms governed by the text of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and make what modifications they wish. In short, we do not need to provide the content disclaimers. Those to whom these things matter will spend a few hours setting up an instance of Mediawiki (at one time I had three such instances running on my very, very old and creaky laptop, so it's not a big deal), a while longer copying the content they're interested in (a full database dump is available at all times). Then they can do what the like. Wikipedia explicitly licenses such forks. I explicitly condone and encourage them. If they succeed, we will of course copy the content back to Wikpedia under the very same GFDL. --Tony Sidaway 00:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that the clitoris is fictional? We're talking about fictional works here. "Adult" content or images some readers may object to has nothing to do with this. Spoiler warnings in articles about fictional works has nothing to do with any sort of disclaimer. It also has nothing to do with historical images. A reader may be offended by an image taken at a concentration camp, but that event happened. The events in Saving Private Ryan never happened and they will never happen. It's fictional. It may be based on historical events but the film is a fictional work. Nobody reads the World War II article and finds out how the war ended and says "You spoiled the ending of WWII for me!" --Pixelface (talk) 07:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Your suggestion that any reader can fork Wikipedia, while perhaps technically possible, avoids consensus building and violates the policy on neutral point of view. Why even attempt to represent views in a neutral way in articles if anybody can just fork Wikipedia? Speaking of encyclopedias, could you show me an encyclopedia that retells the entire storyline of a film released in 2007? How about 1999? Hmm, here's an article on The Sixth Sense at Encarta. Huh, I don't see a spoiler warning. However, I do see an 83-word plot summary that would in no way necessitate a spoiler warning. Encyclopædia Britannica Online apparently doesn't have an article on The Sixth Sense. Do you think unsourced plot summaries that reveal the climax of a film dispense "information according to our tenets of neutral point of view, verifiability, no original research and so on."? --Pixelface 10:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Photographic representations of human sexual behaviour are de facto banned on Wikipedia. If disclaimer tags were to help overcome this situation, then they might be worth considering.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

They are not banned, but like any material that editors may wish to add, they need to be relevant to the context. There are a lot of nutcases who want to disrupt Wikipedia. For some reason, they are more likely to do so by adding porn photos than by adding serious literary analysis of Greek tragedy. Marc Shepherd 13:54, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The claim that "Photographic representations of human sexual behaviour are de facto banned on Wikipedia." is absolutely false and provably so: Autofellatio. --Tony Sidaway 17:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

That is the exception that proves the rule. On the human sexuality category, photos are rare or non-existant.--Nydas^(Talk) 08:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

And WP:NDT explicitly lists Spoiler Warnings as an _exception_ to the general policy. As such, it does not apply. Look back into the archives, where we've rehashed the issue of how spoiler warnings differ from content warnings in many key ways. The short of it is, spoiler warnings are more of an organizational tool than a true warning, allowing people to read those sections they desire to, or more easily find the information they're looking for (if they're looking specifically for the spoilers). This is in large part because it's targetted. Wandering Ghost 14:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

That is an example of descriptivist policy - because spoiler tags were in widespread use, an exception was written into NDT. To date no reasoning for that exception has been presented, which is one of the reasons that consensus and practice have changed. Phil Sandifer 15:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

All WP:NDT does is to refer to the present version of the spoiler guideline, with the statement: "In certain circumstances, it may be considered appropriate to use spoiler notices." This wording perfectly shows why the guideline has failed. We need to do better than "in certain circumstances" and "may be considered appropriate."

Spoiler notices aren't an organizational tool, the way headings are. Headings are used in a neutral way to put structure around large amounts of material. Spoiler tags, by contrast, don't organize anything. Indeed, I believe there is broad consensus (even among those who favor spoiler notices) that an article shouldn't be re-organized for the purpose of helping spoiler-averse readers avert their eyes.

I don't recall anyone suggesting that spoiler tags "allow people to...easily find the information they're looking for...if they're looking specifically for the spoilers." Overwhelmingly, those who favor spoiler tags say that the purpose is to help the reader avoid material, not the opposite. Marc Shepherd 15:19, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

If a citation can be provided for a spoiler warning, I certainly think that is a circumstance where it is "appropriate to use spoiler notices." Headings divide text into sections, and so do {{spoiler}} and {{endspoiler}}. And headings don't require citations. If a spoiler warning has a citation, it's much more reliable than a heading.--Pixelface 10:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

However, in about 99.9% (my estimate) of the situations in which spoiler tags are added, no citation is given. If you are correct that spoilers warnings are "facts" subject to verification, it would mean that virtually all spoiler warnings are subject to removal simply because they are not supported by a verifiable source. Is that really the outcome that you want? Marc Shepherd 16:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

As of the time of this post, I see 1592 pages that link to Template:Spoiler. One article in the namespace links to it. One, out of 1592. One instance appears in Portal: space. The rest appear in User:, Talk:, and Wikipedia: space. Perhaps editors don't add citations when using spoiler tags because tags on Wikipedia don't require citations. And this guideline makes nearly no mention of citations whatsoever, a factor that the policies on verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view rely on. The portion of this guideline that does mention sources and citations keeps getting ignored: "In a work that is uncommonly reliant on the impact of a plot twist or surprise ending — a murder mystery, for instance — a spoiler tag may be appropriate even within a properly labeled "Synopsis" section. These should be sourced when possible (e.g., by citing a professional reviewer who describes the impact of the surprise)." Perhaps the guideline should recommend citations, right at the top. I didn't say spoiler warnings are "facts", a cited spoiler warning means a statement is verifiable. And many tags on Wikipedia are the sole opinion of the editor adding the tag, like {{inappropriate tone}} and {{confusing}}. Editors should actually be free to put {{spoiler}} wherever they want. If an editor can read a book and write a plot summary on their own, why shouldn't they be able to put the spoiler tag where they think it should go? The policy on verifiability says "Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed." If the {{spoiler}} template keeps getting challenged, perhaps editors should provide a source for the template. I don't see how spoiler warnings being subject to removal without citations would change the current situation. The {{spoiler}} tag keeps getting removed from every article in the namespace anyway. I really don't think citations for the tag should be a requirement, but if the tag has a citation, it shows that it's not merely the opinion of the editor adding it. --Pixelface 21:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I never understood why people would bring up templates like {{inappropriate tone}} here. If you are saying a spoiler template is similar, then you're saying the spoiler template should always be temporary. Sure, those are opinions, but it's saying "Hey! This is wrong, fix it!". Most SW proponents want a permanent template on some articles, which is a very different thing. Unless you're saying 'spoiler info' needs fixing? ? Melodia Chaconne ? 22:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I brought up the {{inappropriate tone}} tag because tags don't need citations. I'm not saying the spoiler tag should be temporary. There are tons of templates used on Wikipedia that are not temporary. Wikipedia has 5,785,241 registered users. There are around 12 editors that consistently remove any and all {{spoiler}} tags from the namespace. 4 of them are admins. The group keeps citing this guideline but this guideline says: In a work that is uncommonly reliant on the impact of a plot twist or surprise ending — a murder mystery, for instance — a spoiler tag may be appropriate even within a properly labeled "Synopsis" section. These should be sourced when possible (e.g., by citing a professional reviewer who describes the impact of the surprise). So what's the deal? It's obvious a small group of editors are pushing their POV, which violates the policy on neutral point of view. I suggest {{spoiler}} tags be added freely, and it gets painted as POV. I suggest {{spoiler}} tags use citations, and it gets painted as POV. Why all the warring? Unsourced plot summaries get free reign, but the moment an editor adds a spoiler tag it gets removed. Maybe the group that keeps removing the tag are unfamiliar with the term "spoiler", but when an editor can point to a third party that uses spoiler warnings and cite them in an article, what's the problem? If we're going to ignore citations, we might as well just mark WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV as historical because they clearly don't matter. --Pixelface 03:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

The whole trouble is the wording may be appropriate — implying the equally likely possibility that the warning is not appropriate. That's why progress is impossible until the guideline either disallows SW's entirely, or states some set of cases in which they are required. Otherwise, there is no basis for complaining about the people who remove {{spoiler}} tags; after all, the guideline merely said that they may be appropriate, but they also may not.

In addition, I just took a quick look at a number of articles that had the {{spoiler}} tag added recently. The guideline may say that "these should be sourced when possible," but this was not done in any of the examples I found. Marc Shepherd 15:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I've maintained for many months that people use them as organization tools, because I use them this way. Spoiler warnings are different than content disclaimers. They _are_ more closer to headings, with the exception that they don't enter into the table of contents - they are easy to see while scrolling, so if you're _looking_ for the spoiler information, you can find it easily (I'd done this many times when I just wanted to know what the ending of a movie was, quickly), and if you're looking to avoid it, you don't have to read it. Just like if you're only interested in the early life of a person, you can use headings to only read about that - the table of contents is helpful to jumping to that part, but it's not essential. Disclaimers that go at the top (including the current fiction template) are different, because they don't allow this type of self-organizational ability. If there's a profanity disclaimer, nobody really says to themselves, "Okay, thanks for the disclaimer, I'm going to read everything but the profanity," or its converse, "I'm going to _just_ read the profanity." Similar with nudity. These disclaimers are to guard people from being offended, and they're redundant often because people who are going to be offended, are going to be anyway, whether warned or not. Spoiler warnings are more a little guide that "this information is of a particular type that you may or may not be especially interested in". Spoiler warnings were recognized as different than content disclaimers because THEY ARE different. That's also why they were used.

I notice you again complain that we need to do better than "in certain circumstances" and "may be considered appropriate", but you were curiously silent whenever such changes were opposed, and bright line decriptions of where spoiler tags should be used were added to the guideline and then removed, so I have to ask, do you really feel that this is necessary for a fair compromise? If so, instead of just saying that we need to do this or that, please help work to make this happen. If not, then it's a little disingenuous to keep bringing it up as the reason the guideline is a failure.

In any event, I've seen no evidence that consensus has changed to stop using spoiler warnings, and so spoilers are still considered as an exception to the general disclaimer policy. If it had, people would not be adding them, and a small group forced to remove them. The spoiler patrol itself disproves it, still resorting to the circular reasoning of using the guideline to support their removals while using the removal to support their version of the guideline. They can't even make up their mind whether to be prescriptivist or descriptivist, since when they started they were certainly prescriptivist, and now that they can manage to artificially keep the numbers down it suits them better to be descriptivist. I bet if people managed to get spoilers up to an unmanagable level they'd argue that they _should_ be used on less pages again.

And again, there is a bigger picture here, in that spoiler warnings facilitate information being added, and information being kept. People are more willing to add information when they have the ability to mark it off as a spoiler, and the blind rush to _delete_ spoiler warnings has missed times when people decided to remove the spoiler information itself because the spoiler patrol prevented them from using a warning. Wandering Ghost 13:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Ghost, you're the first person I've seen who favors spoiler tags because you want to find spoilers. Every other person seems more concerned about avoiding unwanted spoilers.

I don't remember what I was "curiously silent" about. I think I've said consistently that the only way to make progress is for those who favor SW's to propose concrete (as opposed to hypothetical) situations in which they would be required. By "concrete," I mean actual Wikipedia articles, with correct placement illustrated.

The curious thing is that many of the contributors to this page who are most militantly in favor of SW's never actually add any—at least, not lately. It would be nice, for a change, if a few of those folks walked the walk, rather than just talking the talk. Then we'd know what they're in favor of, because we'd see it in action on real articles. Marc Shepherd 16:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

You were curiously silent when a change was made to make the "may be used" to "should be used" in a few small cases, and it was reverted by one of the anti-warning group on the grounds that we should _not_ be making bright line rules, but rather refer to 'local consensus'. That would have been a perfect time to jump in and say that we should be making bright line rules.

As to the find spoilers vs avoiding spoilers, well, I'm fairly sure I'm not the only one, feel free to read the archive and find others, the point remains that this is a valid use for spoiler tags.

And with respect to people with SWs adding any, well, it gets a little frustrating because of the gross imbalance of technical power. If I want to add a spoiler warning I have to choose and manually go to a page that lacks one (since theres no handy tool to search for the absence), find the right place for it, and add it. This may be relatively easy, but in the time I've done it, the spoiler patrol can use tools to search for new uses of the spoiler template and revert it on 10 different articles. So yeah, it seems a little pointless to add them without trying to get consensus on the guideline first. The small number of people on the spoiler patrol can overrule _large_ numbers of people. In essense, they're ignoring the guideline as irrelevant, because as long as they can control the actually editing, they can push whatever standard they want. The problem is, the guideline as it stands should be more or less fine, if people weren't obsessive about pushing their point of view on every article. If the spoiler patrol didn't do anything, we'd naturally reach a state where some articles, the ones people judged as requiring spoiler tags, would have them, and others did not, and it'd be relatively small but not as small as it is now. Local consensus would be a good compromise, but they're not pushing local consensus, they're pushing spoiler-patrol-consensus, gaming the system to push their own POV, effectively deciding they own the spoiler template and that they have the duty to see it is used 'right' (in other words, not at all) on every page.

Yes, there will always be a problem that different people have somewhat different standards of where spoiler warnings should go, but that doesn't mean the correct solution is to chuck all of them. It means finding a rational compromise standard that people can agree on even if they aren't 100% pleased with it. In response to the last time you challenged me to come up with five examples of my own personal spoiler standard, I wrote up this, but didn't post it right away because I happened to get busy around that time, and by the time I got back the section in which the challenge was made was archived. Are my standards universal? Of course not. But at least I'm not acting like they are and mass editing all the pages to make sure that my standards stick. A free-for-all policy is better than that. Wandering Ghost 13:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Wandering Ghost's spoiler demonstration is quite well done. And the explanations are very helpful to editors who need guidance on the placement of the {{spoiler}} template. --Pixelface 22:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Phil, there are many arguments and were presented already. SWs are not disclaimers in traditional sense, they can be used as a navigational tools (which Marc just admitted above in the last sentence, and according to polls, people used them as such). I can't imagine why someone would like to read about clitoris, but wouldn't want to see the picture. The arguments for nudity disclaimers are just hypocrisy, I think that people who want to regulate this want foremost to censor others, not themselves. Because in the case of fiction, it's not that people don't want to know the plot, they just don't want to know it from Wikipedia. But the main argument is, usefulness is more important than logical inconsistency of rules. If people think SWs are useful, to hell with the fact that rule is inconsistent with other rules! Human law is full of such contradictions. Samohyl Jan 23:15, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like sophistry to me. Spoiler tags are used to warn readers of certain content. As such they're disclaimers, and are rendered superfluous by the site disclaimer. --Tony Sidaway 22:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Could you tell me how many readers have read the content disclaimer? Could you tell me how many readers know how to find it? Is it linked in the {{welcome}} template? Any of the welcome templates? --Pixelface 03:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

That's a very strawman argument, if I understand the term correctly. Ignorance doesn't discount anyone from obligations. If you don't know you you have to, say, stop for a school bus, you can't plead you didn't know if you get ticketed for it. The disclaimers are there, linked from EVERY page. If people don't read them, it's not the fault of anyone but the readers, even if for the majority of them it's ignorance. ? Melodia Chaconne ? 03:52, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

People have to pass a test before getting a driver's license, so they've already been told. Are readers required to read the content disclaimer before reading Wikipedia? No. Are readers required to read the content disclaimer before signing up for a username? No. Does a link to the content disclaimer appear in any welcome templates? No. How would a new reader find the content disclaimer?

1) They look at any article, they scroll to the very bottom. They click on Disclaimers. Then they click on Content disclaimer. What percentage of readers do this?

2) They look at any article, they scroll to the very bottom, they click on About Wikipedia. Or they look at the left sidebar and click About Wikipedia. Then they go to the Trademarks and copyrights section. Then they click on content disclaimer. What percentage of readers do this?

The percentage of readers familiar with the content disclaimer is relevant if people keep saying it renders the spoiler template unnecessary. Do readers typically read any articles on fictional works before reading the content disclaimer? We should be educating readers, not blaming them or saying it's their own fault for not predicting what an article reveals before they actually read the article. Wikipedia should not punish people for their ignorance. --Pixelface 21:24, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Pixelface that the official disclaimer is irrelevant for purposes of this discussion. Spoiler warnings are either a useful addition to the encyclopedia, or they aren't. It isn't helpful to hide behind a disclaimer that almost no one reads; it obscures, rather than illuminates, the issue. The real question is how to deploy spoiler warnings in such a way that they improve the quality of the product. It is here that the discussion invariably founders. Marc Shepherd 21:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't sophistry. It's argument from usefulness. Other disclaimers always apply to the article as whole, not a part. I would like to know what person finds the article about clitoris useful, but is still offended and doesn't want to see the picture. What is their actual user case? I can easily imagine such case in SWs, and there are many people who used fiction articles that way. So please, if you want to prove it's the same situation, find me an user case (which is not censorship to others) for having nudity content disclaimer. Samohyl Jan 01:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I think some things need to be mentioned. Speaking of the TFD for the {{spoiler}} template, WP:TFD says "Templates that have been listed for more than seven days are eligible for deletion when a rough consensus to do so has been reached or no objections to its deletion have been raised." Template:Spoiler was not listed for deletion for more than seven days. The nominator's timestamp was 07:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC) and the closing admin's timestamp was 22:59, 14 November 2007 (UTC). The TFD was closed early by the administrator JzG, who previously voted to delete the template, and also made several comments on this talk page showing personal opposition to it.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. In the TFD, 26 people argued to keep and 23 people argued to delete (22 if Cryptic's sarcastic comment is discounted). Only 4 people who argued to delete mentioned the {{current fiction}} template, which JzG said had consensus. Also, WP:TFD says "If a template is part of (the functioning of) a Wikipedia policy or guideline, the template cannot be listed for deletion on TfD separately, the template should be discussed where the discussion for that guideline is taking place." The decision to delete the template was taken to deletion review and the administrator JoshuaZ said the TFD showed no consensus. JoshuaZ reverted his closure because he decided he had closed the deletion review too early, and the deletion review was later closed by Xoloz who said "The deletion opponents largely didn't address the merits of the template itself, a key oversight on their part" and "I also cannot ignore that deletion supporters were alone in reaching the issue of the merits of the template, and that their arguments, unrebutted, where convincing." despite the fact that WP:DRV says "Remember that Deletion Review is not an opportunity to (re-)express your opinion on the content in question. It is an opportunity to correct errors in process (in the absence of significant new information), and thus the action specified should be the editor's feeling of the correct interpretation of the debate." I think the template was wrongly deleted but I still think it was a good thing. The existence of the template allowed a small group of editors to constantly suppress it for 6 months. A small group of editors was able to check Whatlinkshere daily and remove the template from every article, effectively burying it. Their suppression continued for 6 months despite no consensus to delete the template. These facts need to be widely known by the editors of Wikipedia. Thank you. --Pixelface (talk) 13:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I certainly can't fault your Wikidetective skills--I've seen you pull those out now several times and have been thoroughly impressed each time. However, might I suggest you remove your historical commentary from that post? You've already collected what happened--is it necessary to say why you feel it was important as well? --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 14:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I've removed "For people reading this in the archives" from my comment because another user decided to put my comment into its own section. My comment was about the TFD. I know about the aggressive archiving that goes on on this page, that is why I said "For people reading this in the archives." This thread will be archived pretty soon as well. I do not think the Special:Whatlinkshere tool is meant for suppression of a template before there has been consensus to delete it. For editors coming to this guideline, I think that information is important and should be widely known since it resulted in the entire rewrite of this guideline and possibly affects all templates throughout Wikipedia. --Pixelface (talk) 22:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

My earlier statement that 22 people argued to keep and 22 people argued to delete was incorrect. I changed that in my above comment. These are the 26 people and 23 people (or 22) I am referring to:

In the TFD, the following editors argued to keep:

1. Nydas[11]
2. Tomgreeny[12]
3. Wandering Ghost[13]
4. Pixelface[14]
5. AaronSw[15]
6. KF[16]
7. 132.205.99.122[17]
8. Pytom[18]
9. Melodia[19]
10. Kuronue[20]
11. vsb[21]
12. Enter Movie[22]
13. Ned Scott[23]
14. Harmil[24]
15. Glenn Magus Harvey[25]
16. Gwyndon[26]
17. Ceres3[27]
18. Photouploaded[28]
19. Anakinjmt[29]
20. Milomedes[30]
21. Jake the Editor Man[31]
22. DGG[32]
23. Voldemore[33]
24. Grue[34]
25. orngjce223[35]
26. XDanielx[36]

The following editors argued to delete (if you include the nominator):

1. L337 kybldmstr[37]
2. Kusma[38]
3. Martarius[39]
4. Phil Sandifer[40]
5. Cryptic[41] (this was sarcastic I believe...)
6. Marc Shepherd[42]
7. Gavia immer[43]
8. Angr[44]
9. Axem Titanium[45]
10. Captain Infinity[46]
11. Tony Sidaway[47]
12. Erik[48]
13. Shalom[49]
14. Atropos[50]
15. Svetovid[51]
16. Asyndeton[52]
17. Sceptre[53]
18. Garion96[54]
19. Doczilla[55]
20. Jrphayes[56]
21. Rocket000[57]
22. Black Falcon[58]
23. David Gerard[59]

Even though the {{spoiler}} template was deleted, I think the deletion actually benefits editors who found the template useful. When the template existed, the Special:Whatlinkshere tool proved much more useful to the "spoiler patrol" — editors who systematically removed the template from every article. With the template gone, homemade spoiler warnings will persist, they just won't be standardized. A bot will be required to find them, such as TonyBot and it's output list. Editors can simply avoid using the word "spoiler" to avoid detection by TonyBot. One of the main reasons to remove homemade spoiler warnings was that a template existed, but with the template gone, what's the reason? POV? The current spoiler guideline says nothing about homemade spoiler warnings. --Pixelface (talk) 01:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Deleted!

Well, looks like the anti-spoiler admins are pulling out all the stops in order to give spoiler warnings a final hammering. One of their number, JzG, has deleted it in the face of the discussion, an obvious no consensus. I've started a deletion review.--Nydas^(Talk) 23:20, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

So, again there's no clean spoiler-topic decision due to yet another clique process abuse. It recharges the issue of an ongoing string of loose cannon abuses that otherwise might have faded to an occasional grumble.

If not considering the process-governing wikiguides, the debate looked to me also like a no-consensus debate result, default to keep. But this abusive close mostly isn't about a biased judgment call. I've lost my capacity for astonishment that JzG/Guy also had to ignore two wikiguides to declare a delete.

First, this delete decision was made in an improper venue:

Wikipedia:Templates for deletion: "If a template is part of (the functioning of) a Wikipedia policy or guideline, the template cannot be listed for deletion on TfD separately,..."

Second, IIRC, the debate closer, JzG/Guy, was a highly opinionated anti-spoiler-notice participant in the early stages of the spoiler notice mass-removals debate beginning May 2007 – yet he closed anyway while having an unmistakable conflict of interest.

Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators: "3. As a general rule, don't close discussions or delete pages whose discussions you've participated in. Let someone else do it."

I noticed illogic and bias in JzG/Guy's delete Template:Spoiler closing summary. A combination of both was his statement: "The Great Spoiler War is over and the encyclopaedia won.", the illogic being that there still exists a spoiler guide, and a template is not needed to place plain-text spoiler notices. Since text versus template is a relatively small issue, nothing substantive has been settled. Having been mentioned in the debate (twice, IIRC), JzG/Guy cannot be ignorant of this fact, so something smells wrong with his haste to declare a "war" over — as well as his sinking to the level of calling a contentious debate a "war". If it's a "war" then all is fair to abuse process to win, and that appears to be what happened.

I reject JzG's unconsensed declaration of "war", as a perilous and divisive metaphor, which leads to unspoken assumptions that good-faith debate opponents would become "enemies" on both sides — with all that implies. Such thinking is not only ethically bankrupt, it's a barbarian notion beneath the encyclopedia project's civilized teamwork concept.

JzG's inflammatory eagerness to ignore the facts suggests a bias of double meaning, superficially that "the encyclopaedia won" because {{current fiction}} is a "better idea" than {{spoiler}}, yet darkly suggestive in subtext that "the encyclopaedia" was against whomever lost, and renews the WP:OWN charge that he and the rest of the clique consider themselves alone to be "the encyclopaedia", while the other editors just work here free for them.

JzG/Guy can claim it doesn't mean the latter, he can even believe it himself, but one of the classic problems of conflict of interest is that people who don't think they are biased, often are. Even if they aren't actually biased, the appearance of a conflict of interest is as damaging to public trust as a bias-in-fact. Based on long experience in western civilization, recusal from making judgments during a conflict of interest is the only ethical course of action; that's exactly what the Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators calls for.

During this November 2007 template deletion debate, Wandering Ghost wrote: "The spoiler patrollers are OBSESSIVE, in a way that people adding spoiler warnings can't be." I think Ghost has a point based on observable behaviors. Milo 04:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This may be, but the template was deleted. Wrongly so perhaps, but I think it had to be done. The debate was reaching the stage of a full-on war. With the template, there was no hope of any consensus (without intervention from ArbCom), heated arguments and accusations abounded and things were going nowhere. Without out it, things are cooling down. Finally people are sitting down and discussing how to improve things around here, rather than arguing over moot points. Now tell me, would you rather the former because "we HAVE to keep it", or the latter because we can actually do something useful?

Milomedes, the thing to note here is, while sometimes unfair things happen here, you just have to understand that it's probably for the best. This is the case here; unless we take the source of the war out of the equation, we will not move on. L337 kybldmstr 05:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, so the consensus on Wikipedia is built by silencing one party? And it's for the better? Nice quotes, really, it's sad someone believes that. I am sorry, but I already have heard this from communists (not the real ones - see Czechoslovakia:_1948-1989). Samohyl Jan 06:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not what I said at all. I disagree with the way that TfD ended, but think about it - it's gone, and with it a lot of the pressure everyone was being put under. In other words, this debate will hopefully fade away into nothing now the source of it is gone. The whole point of the TfD was to diffuse the edit war; if people simply want to reignite it, then intervention will inevitably result at some point. L337 kybldmstr 10:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The debate will not "fade away into nothing" because the {{spoiler}} template was not the source of this debate. For now, the focus has merely shifted onto another template, {{current fiction}}, which is supposedly "superior." --Pixelface (talk) 08:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I argued to keep the template, but I think it's kind of refreshing it was deleted. That means the Whatlinkshere page can't be used anymore by anti-taggers to remove it from every article. They'll have to rely on a bot now to remove homemade spoiler warnings. --Pixelface 07:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

L337 kybldmstr (05:06) wrote: "Now tell me, would you rather" Rising a meta-level above the false dilemma fallacy, I'd say we give significantly different weights as to what's important.

I care about spoiler notices only moderately. If they had been removed by due process consensus last May 2007, I'd shrug it off and wouldn't be here now. I care about the template only moderately, but if kept, I think the clique would have been slightly more open to compromise.

As is, it seems increasingly likely that any change will come from the external world after big publishing/Hollywood decides how much money (if any) suppressing spoilers is worth to them. If they decide it's worth it, there are a lot of pressure options open to them. If you think about it, all they really have to do is convince Jimbo to side with them, and 45,000 spoiler notices will be back within a year. I'm not forecasting that will happen, I'm just pointing out how expedient it would be for spoiler notices to return with zero consequences.

What I do care about is due process abuse and corruption. If you want to know why, read Code of Hammurabi and Wikipedia:Process is important. I feel about due process something like Jimbo feels about NPOV. Neither one can be perfect, but each improves the other.

What's really deja vu about this dialogue is the "L337" in your username. From my point of view, you have marginalized my investigative reporting efforts to help you and your peers.

After the mass-removal process abuses of May 2007, I decided to investigate why. I eventually deduced an unconsensed hidden agenda by the anti-spoiler clique to exclude a large class of young people from using or participating in Wikipedia, partly because some have a subculture that uses the l33t dialect of English, and partly because anti-child culture may be a significant covert trend. I gather that l33ts on WP were young, difficult to control, interested in fiction, and frequently wrote formally ungrammatical spoiler tags like "OMG SP01L3RZ!!!".

I assume that they are now growing up and probably don't write l33t as much as they use to. IMHO, getting rid of spoiler notices as a way of getting rid of l33ts is an extreme reaction, to a minor annoyance much better handled with wikiguide education.

I don't want to oversimplify a story of complex motivations, because the clique's good writing agenda is one of which I approve. If you want all the details, search the archives at the top of this page starting archive 4/May 5 for "Milo", and read my posts. Or for a quick overview search for "l33t" which is found in Milo 22:04, 2007-07-11 and Milo 21:51, 2007-09-01. Milo 09:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I have never used 1337 if that's what you meant; I'm not with them. And I am helping peers - as in everyone who's involved with this. By that I mean, I want to put an end to this war before it goes any further. I'm not anti-SW - I don't delete them, I don't add them either. My nominating the template in the first place had nothing to do with any of that, though I admit my explanation was rather misplaced. I have not taken, and will not take, any side in this. All I'm trying to do is resolve this conflict. Whether that involves deleting the template, or taking the matter to ArbCom or whatever doesn't matter - as long as this conflict comes to an end, everyone should hopefullly be happy. Please understand that. L337 kybldmstr 10:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that the motivations behind the spoiler tag removal are down to a desire to keep out the young in particular. There's been a lot of stuff like 'let this end', but this isn't really the end of anything. It's only a small part of a wider trend by some parts of the admin caste to retreat from the things that make Wikipedia good. Indeed, this is small beans compared to the imminent threat of flagged revisions.

As the Internet expands, there will be an influx of people with markedly different worldviews, young and old. The drawbridge is being gradually raised to keep them out.

It's telling that this campaign was kickstarted on that startling anachronism, the Wikipedia mailing list. It's also telling how very far the donations are from reaching their target.--Nydas^(Talk) 11:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Donations

"how very far the donations are from reaching their target" Seriously? Got comparison trendline stats from previous years? If not, please tell me what you remember anecdotally.
I suggested the possibility of donation trouble a few months ago, but it's hard to believe that WP spoiler policy has anything to do with it (pending some obvious PR blitz against "spoiler sites"). However, the March 22, 2007 global TV/newspaper coverage of Wikipedia's unpredictable unreliability for academic citation, that I could believe has something to do with it. Milo 12:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

They've changed the format of the donation bar, so they're probably having trouble. Spoiler warnings are small potatoes compared to other stuff, but it all adds up.--Nydas^(Talk) 18:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The Fundraising FAQ "Why aren't you announcing a target?" and "If you don't have a financial target, how are you measuring success?" is vague about the reasons for counting donors instead of dollars. That may be because it's an experiment based on 96% small contributions (averaging $22.41 in 2005-2006 [60]). I have no reason to believe that I wouldn't support the idea if I were on the board.

I did some estimates to detect possible donation trouble. Feel free to skip the method work and down to the bottom line.

The WMF Live contributions fundraising page was removed from the FAQ, but I found it by browsing the FAQ's page history. There's an unlabled green banner showing $1,664,997.73, but it's in a directory "fundraising/2006/meter.png", so that might be last year's total, since the 2005-2006? goal may have been $1.5M before the WMF board stopped setting financial goals on Dec 20, 2006.

It would take way too much time to total all the current 23,101 donations from the current 924 pages, so I multiplied the 2005-2006 average donation ($22.41) by 23,101 = $517,624. Then I used the Live contributions page filter to select donations $100+ between fundraising start of Oct 22 and today Nov 17, which was about 40 donations totaling $10,533, including only two $1000+ donations, so there's no significant percentage of big money in the current fundraiser. Compare that to big donations up to $300K from previous periods by removing the date filter restriction.

So my estimated of current donations are over $528,000, ~3.5 weeks (43%) into an eight week (100%) campaign. Dividing $528,000 by 43% yields a 1% of $12,279, multiplied by 100% yields a linear projected campaign total of $1,227,907.

Since the green banner showing $1.6M may be an annual total, I reset the Live contributions date filter to show between Jan 7 to Oct 22 (between the last? public fund drive ending to the start of this one), and to show $1000+ donations. There were about 50 donations totaling $307,731. Added to the projected total of $1,227,907 sums to $1,535,638 annual 2007 estimated.

The difference from the green banner is $129,360, which is down 7.8%. But, this is an estimate, not an audit. There could be a burst of donations toward the Dec 22 end of the public campaign, which is not unusual for donation campaigns. There could be more big donations at years' end for tax purposes. About the only thing I can reasonably say is that the current estmate of donations doesn't seem to be better than last year. Milo 06:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I've found an official daily Contributions Summary page. The to-date (Nov 28, 2007) current total is $929,736.25. At $30.60, the 2007 average donation is much higher (~30%) than the average from the legacy fundraising page used for my estimate above.

"They've changed the format of the donation bar, so they're probably having trouble" This does seem to be the case, and this issue was reported by Wikipedia Signpost/2007-11-12/News and notes#Fundraiser continues. I found a detailed discussion at WP:Fundraising redesign#Banner Effect History.

Also reported by the Signpost, the more interesting news is that donors have found a way to complain by making trivial donations with a comment. "The number of donations below $0.30, often made by users critical of Wikipedia policies who wish to have their comments displayed on the donation website, is about four times that of last year's drive." The complaint donations are through the graphical roof; see Image:Wiki pennies.png. Unfortunately, the donation filter can't be set to show only small donations, so it isn't possible to read the complaints without the resources to download and sort possibly a thousand pages of 25 commented donations each. Milo 09:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Flagged revisions

"flagged revisions" What is the problem with flagged revisions? Milo 12:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

You can read more about them on the talk archives of Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions and other places. I don't like them.--Nydas^(Talk) 18:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite for {{current fiction}}

Since the spoiler template is gone, I've rewritten it to smoothly cover the bits that were about {{current fiction}}. Hack away. (If the spoiler template is resurrected, we can revert to the last spoileriffic version.) - David Gerard 00:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

It's been a long while since I looked at this talk page.. but what the heck? You guys just retitled the spoiler template and made it bigger? ... Has anything actually changed? -- Ned Scott 01:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Quite. Tphi 01:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Sure. The current fiction template is only for...current fiction. ANd it goes on tops of pages, not in the middle. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 01:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Two things need to be done somewhat quickly if this is to be the desired outcome. First, we need to completely bot-scrub the spoiler template, as its use on talk pages just rendered a ton of talk pages very ugly and unfortunate due to this redirect. Second, we need to think seriously about when "current fiction" sunsets so that we avoid absurd situations where, for example, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is tagged as current fiction. While I am loathe to create a time-based rule here, the implication of "current" does necessitate some serious consideration of sunsetting. I would tentatively suggest that, at least, a film is no longer current when it has served out its initial release in major English-speaking markets. Other media? This is, perhaps, something we need to farm out to individual WikiProjects? Actually, that seems ideal to me - let individual WikiProjects decide what their standards for currency are, and refer people to WikiProjects from this page. Phil Sandifer 02:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure we should scrub the spoiler tags before the current DRV on Template:Spoiler is resolved. Although at the current rate it might end up being closed as an endorse deletion per WP:SNOW, it may be an idea to wait first, otherwise it just suits the ASWs to retore the tag but not have it used at all. L337 kybldmstr 03:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, right now the tag is deleted. The DRV means someone is proposing to change that fact, but right now the tag is deleted, and, as David said, we can always revert back the changes if the tag somehow and improbably gets restored. Phil Sandifer 03:15, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, cool. Well, as for the CF sunset, I think it should be somewhere around 3-6 months. It can't be too long otherwise we get old works being tagged, and it can't be too short either or else, the obvious. L337 kybldmstr 03:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm OK with that, but I do tend to think that localized consensuses are preferable to broad ones in cases like this. This is a particular issue for things like anime and manga, where translation and varying releases can have a very strange sense of what is "current." Hence the "delegate to WikiProjects" idea. (Also important because, by any numerical standard, every article on a popular comics superhero would always carry the tag. I imagine that, in practice, WikiProject Comics would simply decline to use the tag at all. This seems optimal.) Phil Sandifer 03:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually it's a trivial matter to tailor what a template displays according to the namespace in which it is deployed. All that really matters, however, is what happens at article level. Editors who find the current text inconvenient will simply remove it and replace it with more appropriate text. The tag was not really intended for talk pages and the like in any case. --Tony Sidaway 06:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I reverted all those edits to the last version by Pytom and replaced all instances of {{spoiler}} with {{current ficton}}. --Pixelface 07:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The current version of the page makes no sense at all. A complete rewrite is in order. Kusma (talk) 08:11, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The guideline was gutted by editors being bold. I'll admit that my revision based on the last version by Pytom with all instances of {{spoiler}} replaced with {{current ficton}} was lacking. I suppose we could edit then discuss, if that's what editors are doing now, instead of proposals that have consensus being added to the article. --Pixelface 08:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Kusma, you changed:

Citations from reliable sources that use spoiler warnings are acceptable in articles.

to

Citations from reliable sources are acceptable in articles whether these sources use spoiler warnings or not.

Perhaps my edit was unclear. I meant that editors are free to cite reliable sources that use spoiler warnings and mention that the source used a spoiler warning. I realize we also accept reliable sources that do not use spoiler warnings. Are you suggesting that reliable sources that do not use spoiler warnings can be cited for what they do not say? --Pixelface 11:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The important question is not whether a source used a spoiler warning, but whether that fact is germane to the article. We are writing an encyclopedia, not building an index of external spoiler warnings. Marc Shepherd 13:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

We may not be building an index of external spoiler warnings, but we are allowed to cite reliable sources for interpretation. Spoiler warnings are an interpretation of a fictional work — the interpretation that knowing certain information beforehand would affect your enjoyment of that work. Any interpretation should cite secondary sources to show that an editor is not performing original research. Are you deeming an entire class of citations invalid simply because you don't agree with what they say? When a secondary source uses a spoiler warning, that doesn't mean it's a fact. It means the spoiler warning is verifiable, like a rating of "4 stars" or "1 star" is verifiable. The criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. You don't have to agree with what a reliable source says. A citation means someone else said that (preferably a reliable source). You don't have to change your personal feelings to match what they said. And I'm getting tired of the "this is an encyclopedia" line. Yeah, okay. What's your point? What is it about the word "encyclopedia" that means spoilers must be present? Wikipedia is on the Internet. Spoiler warnings have been considered good netiquette for years. If you want to talk about print encyclopedias, when Jimmy Wales saw his first World Book in 1969 when he was 2 or 3 years old[61], I'm sure it did not contain a detailed retelling of Citizen Kane. If you want to talk about electronic encyclopedias, here's an article on The Sixth Sense at Encarta. I don't see a spoiler warning. However, I do see an 83-word plot summary that would in no way necessitate a spoiler warning. Encyclopædia Britannica Online apparently doesn't have an article on The Sixth Sense. So you have to admit that Wikipedia is rather unique among encyclopedias due to the real-time nature of information dissemination. And excluding reliable sources simply because you personally don't like them is biased. It's like saying an article about your favorite film cannot mention any negative reviews because you think they're wrong. --Pixelface 00:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixelface, your comment reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. It's true that any fact or opinion in a Wikipedia article must be backed by verifiable sources. But that does not mean that every such fact is relevant. Even properly cited remarks are sometimes deleted because they have very little to do with the subject matter, or are given undue weight, or because the point has already been made in another way.

Where narrative surprise is an important element in the reception history of a work of fiction, it would naturally be important for the article to say so. For instance, The Empire Strikes Back mentions (with cited sources) the efforts during production to ensure the surprise ending was kept a secret. The revelation that Vader is Luke's father is one of the iconic moments in cinema history, and the article (which has FA status) covers it appropriately.

The general question of whether our articles should contain spoiler warnings, merely for the purpose of protecting tender eyes that would rather not have the surprise given away, is something entirely different. But if such warnings should be present, the vast majority of them would be dependent on editor opinion for their placement—as was almost invariably the case before {{spoiler}} was deleted. There are very few works for which the placement of the spoiler tag can be backed up with a cited external source. Marc Shepherd 01:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

There is no policy on relevance, only a guideline on notability. The guideline on notability applies to the topics of articles, it does not limit article content. If a notable film critic reviews a film and uses a spoiler warning and the review is published in a reliable source, they can be cited in an article. It's as simple as that. If you want to talk about undue weight, you're going to have to cite secondary sources that reveal spoilers. This is not about "protecting tender eyes", it's about citations in reliable sources. My personal opinion has no place in articles. Your personal opinion has no place in articles. If a reliable source says something, it doesn't matter what your personal opinion is. Editors collate previously published information. If several critics hold the interpretation that foreknowledge of a film's events affect the first experience of watching that film, you are personally in no position to contradict that. Editors cannot put their own interpretation into articles, that is against the policy on no original research. The interpretation that a plot description should be preceded by a spoiler warning is useful when presented before the plot description. If editors working on an article decide that a statement about the plot doesn't belong in the plot section, fine. I really don't think you need to worry about how many external sources use spoiler warnings. The burden of evidence is on the person who makes the claim, and there are plenty of reviews[62][63] for other editors to look at. Do you know why that moment in The Empire Strikes Back is iconic? Because it was a surprise. Because everybody seeing the film didn't know it was going to happen. Forcing every Wikipedia reader to read the surprise completely dismantles what the author created. --03:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, that's what you want to say. I don't see why this should be written in the guideline. If it is important to talk about spoilers in reviews (for example, see Harry_Potter_and_the_Deathly_Hallows#Spoiler_embargo) of course it makes sense to write about it. In general, I don't think it is relevant enough for every article whether a single reviewer does or does not spoil the plot or does or does not use a warning. That should only be included if the spoiling (or non-spoiling) leads to a notable debate that can be covered in our article. Really, I don't see a need to say anything general in this guideline. Kusma (talk) 11:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no policy on importance, or relevance. If a reliable source uses a spoiler warning, or if multiple reliable sources use spoiler warnings, editors should be able to cite them in articles. If you personally don't like what they say, you have no right to remove those citations from an article. I don't think there has to be a "spoiler embargo" on a fictional work for us to be able to mention and cite sources that use spoiler warnings. The fact that there was an actual "spoiler embargo" lends support to spoiler warnings. The guideline should mention citations and it should have from day one. --Pixelface 01:15, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixelface, editors delete material from articles all the time, even when cited; see WP:NOT#INFO. I have to wonder if you took any kind of systematic look at the usage of spoiler tags before the template was deleted. There was practically never any citation for them. But even where such citations can be found, the purpose of a Wikipedia article is to inform readers about the subject matter, not (as in a classic spoiler warning) to help readers avoid being informed. Marc Shepherd 01:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

That's funny you mention WP:NOT#INFO because it says "Plot summaries. Wikipedia articles on published works (such as fictional stories) should cover their real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's development, impact or historical significance, not solely a detailed summary of that work's plot." Citing interpretations by film critics that certain information may ruin a film is sourced analysis. Maybe the {{spoiler}} tag was in articles it didn't belong in, but having no citation was not the reason editors removed the tag. They removed it because it was "silly", "obvious", "redundant", "insulting", "censorship", etc. Those are personal opinions and have nothing to do with sources. I suppose it's good that unsourced spoiler warnings were removed, so now we can focus on citations — which this guideline should have focused on from day one. --Pixelface 05:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixelface, while I applaud being bold in general, I absolutely do not agree with some of the changes you made. As a guideline, this page requires a level of consensus before changes of any substance can be made, let alone the sweeping rewrite you did. Furthermore, you then proceeded to spam the template across video game and movie articles, several of which do not qualify as recent.

Suffice to say, I've reverted your changes to these guidelines as well. I encourage you to continue working on these guidelines but ask that you please be more careful about consensus in the future. --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 12:22, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

If changes do not reflect consensus, why don't you revert it back to this revision? David Gerard, L337 kybldmstr, Phil Sandifer, Tony Sidaway, and Kusma didn't come to a consensus on this talk page regarding their changes to the guideline before completely changing the guideline. I've already discussed the reason for tagging the articles I did on your talk page. You reverted this guideline to a version that advocates the {{current fiction}} tag, so I really don't understand where you're coming from. --Pixelface 13:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The earlier guideline clearly had to be changed, since it referred to a template that no longer existed. In your most recent edits, you are disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. Marc Shepherd 13:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The consensus needed for the version of the guidelines I reverted to is found here. Community consensus determined that the {{spoiler}} template should be deleted in favor of the {{Current fiction}} template, and so my reversion was to reflect that level of consensus, which calls for the latter over the former. While I may not agree with this consensus (and may in fact seek to change it at some point), my disagreement with your usage of the template doesn't mean I won't respect the voice of the community. --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 01:43, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

This guideline is about spoiler warnings. If a template is deleted, that doesn't mean the guideline has to be completely rewritten. This guideline does not exist to document how a specific template should be used, that is what the template documentation is for. I agree that the guideline needed to be changed, I think this revision was fine, but it was changed by Kusma and jonny-mt. I have not disrupted Wikipedia to make a point. What edits of mine are you referring to? Are you talking about tagging articles about recently released fictional works? The closing admin in the TFD said that the {{current fiction}} template is the better template. The admin said there was consensus for that template. So I followed what the admin said and tagged recently released fictional works like editors are supposed to. --Pixelface 01:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

You are correct about the fact that the guideline does not have to be fundamentally rewritten--while my understanding based on this talk page is that the rewrites were done to reflect that the {{spoiler}} template is no longer in existence, a closer examination of the edit history (diff between just before the closure of the TfD and just before the series of changes by Pixelhead) reveals that this is not the case, and I may do some further reversions to add that old information back in. However, that does not change the fact that you then took it to the next step and made further major changes to the guidelines without examining consensus first.

As for WP:POINT, as I mentioned on your talk page the documentation there provided little to no information as to how the template should be used--in fact, one of the only stipulations of the documentation at the time you were doing your taggings was that it does not belong on every work of fiction. I agree with you that discussions about the usage of the template belong over there, but the template is mentioned here in connection with enforcement of the guidelines just like the {{WPBiography}} template is mentioned in WP:BLP. --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 02:00, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I've checked out the history (diff between pre-{{spoiler}} deletion and current version here), and it seems that the deleted text did indeed revolve around the use of the {{spoiler}} template, which means it is supported by consensus as noted above. I think some of the information in there is useful and should be re-adapted for the documentation of the {{Current fiction}} template, but I see no reason to revert back to it right now. --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 02:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

If the template no longer exists, because, once again, THERE IS NO CONSENSUS TO DISALLOW SPOILER WARNINGS, the most appropriate response is to include the means to mark spoilers in-text, not to suggest they're forbidden on Wikipedia. It doesn't matter if the template is gone if consensus doesn't exist to forbid warning. We should make provisions for hand-made spoiler tags to be allowed, or for use of subheadings as spoiler warnings. Wandering Ghost 18:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I would like to note that anybody who looks at the past six months and thinks that this is a remotely good idea will be blocked so fast their head will spin. Phil Sandifer 19:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you threatening to block editors who provide citatons to reliable sources that use spoiler warnings? Can you tell us why an entire group of citations should be excluded because you personally don't like what they say? --Pixelface 01:59, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Unless said edits are in the form of "According to Roger Ebert, X is a spoiler" they violate NPOV. Phil Sandifer 03:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

So this is acceptable in your opinion? I would like to propose some changes to this guideline to get some input. I've started a new section called Proposed addition to the guideline regarding citations below. --Pixelface 08:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the threat. It seems to be in keeping with what I've seen of you so far, so it's nice to have opinions confirmed. Now we can be threatened with blocking for thinking it's a good idea to have spoiler warnings in-text. Where exactly do I sign up for my time in the ministry of love? Please, by all means, block me for thinking that such is a good idea. And please point out where in WP policy there's anything against a home-made spoiler warning or using a section break as a spoiler warning.

And in any event, I've seen no evidence or even good arguments that spoiler warnings do violate NPOV, because a point of view is not being advanced. Nor do they violate NOR or V. Any more than saying a character in a movie is a killer, or a conracter, or an American is. All that matters is that we have a definition of what a killer, contracter, American, or a spoiler is, and then when that occurs in a work of fiction, we are free to point it out, using the primary source. -- Wandering Ghost (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Ghost, I realize you're trying to get the deletion overturned, and if you're successful, what I'm about to write will be irrelevant. But assuming the deletion is sustained, no rational person could interpret it as an invitation to add home-brew spoiler warnings. Marc Shepherd 19:39, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

The fact remains that the template deletion is a _template_ deletion. It does not necessarily suggest that it believes spoiler warnings as a whole should be banned, especially a) there were MORE KEEP votes than DELETE votes on the template, by my count (and yet still, an ANTI-WARNING editor closed it, and declared the result was delete), and since a number of the no votes were votes solely on the basis that the _template_ was _not_ being used, silent on whether they _should_ be used.

As such, the question of spoiler warnings within articles, is still an open one. You cannot claim victory on that.

Dishonest tactics were used to delete the spoiler template, as they've been used _throughout_ the spoiler debate by many on the anti-spoiler-warning side. Most people didn't engage in it, but enough did, and enough probably noticed and shamefully didn't speak out against it because they disliked spoiler warnings and were happy to see the results go their way. I may not be able to stop the subverting of consensus, but I'll still make sure it's not easy for you, and that you have to fight every step of the way. There is still no consensus that spoiler warnings, in-article, are inappropriate. As such, the fight continuse as to where and how to place such warnings. Feel free to offer proposals that fit in with compromise, unless you wish to be one of those who shamefully ignores consensus because doing so helps your own side.-- Wandering Ghost (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

It's been two months since you last contributed to the mainspace. Why don't you go do that instead of fighting this debate further? -- Phil Sandifer (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Because I happen to believe that abuse of process in an organization I'm involved in is important to stand up against, speak out against, and fight against. I know, it's a crazy thing to believe in. Along with "the ends don't justify the means". Or "why not try answering the issues raised rather than diverting somebody". I would have thought that these ideas would not be so rare on Wiki, but consider the lesson learned. Incidentally, I have been contributing some, just usually from my other terminal where I don't bother to log in. However, it's true that my contributions have decreased sharply since I've seen, first hand, how wikipedia's principles can be corrupted and abused. So I'll continue here in the hope of finding like minded people on the other side who are reasonable enough to say "Yes, I may disagree with spoiler warnings, but we still have to follow the rules and the spirit of the rules". And if I find I'm truly as much a minority in the basic principles as I feel in this debate, I'll likely retire from any large scale editing (and of course, any hope I might have had of donating).

As to yourself, I have to ask, since you clearly do not like the idea of consensus, why don't you attempt to get a job editing a more conventional encyclopedia? I'm sure you have some editing skill and it would seem to cater more to your philosophical point of view. Wandering Ghost (talk) 12:29, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Sunsetting current fiction

Right now we have a somewhat arbitrary two month deadline. This deadline seems to me to be awfully long for some things and awfully short for others. Does anybody have a good reason why we shouldn't devolve power on this one to individual WikiProjects? The current fiction needs of the anime/manga folks are fundamentally different from the current fiction needs of, say, WikiProject Shakespeare (who I imagine would be puzzled by the decision to put a current fiction tag on a filmic adaptation of Shakespeare at all). Phil Sandifer 13:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

That seems like a sensible approach. I prefer leaving the tag in place for longer periods of time. I mean, suppose it were there for six months. What's the harm? Marc Shepherd 14:00, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

It would make sense for the guideline to defer to wikiproject style guides that exist, and give a rule of thumb for articles that aren't covered. I hope the wikiprojects won't run amok. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they will. It should be noted, in parallel, I'm trying to rephrase Template:Current fiction so it's not a bigger, uglier spoiler tag - have a look at its current form. I think, pleasantly, its current form also implies its own sunsetting - when real-world perspective exists and starts to move into the article, the tag goes away. Or, alternatively, is replaced with Template:Cleanup fiction-as-fact. Phil Sandifer 14:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Phil Sandifer, you said "Template:Current fiction is superior in every regard to (the spoiler template)" and at that time, the {{current fiction}} template displayed "This article documents a recently released work of fiction. It may contain detailed information on the characters, plot, and ending of the work of fiction it describes." So why are you changing the wording? Was your comment total bullshit? --Pixelface 01:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

You've so gallantly redefined the scale of bullshit at this point that I don't even know how to answer you. Phil Sandifer 03:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Phil, please read WP:NAM, particularly the point I've directed you to. I also recommend WP:COOL and WP:DR. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 20:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

The two months are certainly completely arbitrary. I suggested this number from the experience with the Harry Potter 7 release, although it may be slightly longer than what people used there. I don't have problems with the tag being applicable between a couple of days to a year or so depending on the article subject. Kusma (talk) 14:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

All right, well, the current wording on Template:Current fiction seems to be gathering a general sense of "don't hate it," and it implies some level of self-sunsetting. So if this situation remains stable for a bit longer I'm probably going to update this guideline and notify the WikiProjects. Phil Sandifer 15:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I've worded it now as "typically between a week and a month or two; this is a matter for local editorial judgement" - I think "editorial judgement" is better than "this is disputed", as it doesn't imply "oooh do this and you'll have trouble" and more accurately reflects the way things will likely work - David Gerard 15:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's better. Marc Shepherd 16:22, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added "and you should consult the relevant WikiProject for more guidance" as well. Phil Sandifer 16:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed addition to the guideline regarding citations

Before this portion..

It is not acceptable to delete information from an article about a work of fiction because you think it spoils the plot. Such concerns must not interfere with neutral point of view, encyclopedic tone, completeness, or any other element of article quality (for example, WP:LEAD).

I propose we add..

Articles on fictional works should offer sourced analysis. The opinion that certain information will spoil someone's enjoyment of a fictional work is one possible interpretation. On Wikipedia, interpretations must be attributed to reliable sources that make these interpretations in order to prevent original research. When a reliable source (such as a newspaper or magazine) uses a spoiler warning in a review of a fictional work (such as a film, book, video game, comic book, etc), editors can mention who gave the spoiler warning and cite the review and place it at the beginning of a plot summary.

==Examples==

When describing the plot of the film, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave a spoiler warning.[64]

When describing the plot of the film, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave a spoiler warning.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050129/COMMENTARY/501290301 |title=Critics have no right to play spoiler |accessdate=2007-11-11 |author=[[Roger Ebert]] |date=[[2005-01-29]] |work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]]}}</ref>

Shall I add that to the guideline? Any comments or suggestions are welcome. --Pixelface 08:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

As I remarked on Talk:Million Dollar Baby:

This does look to me as if it belongs, if anywhere, on Ebert's own article. It is one critic's opinion on a subject only tangentially related to the plot of this movie. As such I think it looks out of place in the plot summary.

However the principle that we should refer to sourced analysis is a good one. I believe this is, and should be, covered properly on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) (WP:WAF). In covering fiction, the opinion of a single critic, even a fairly prominent one, is usually not significant. We should take care not to give the false impression (as we appear to be doing in the example) that the most significant thing the critics have said about Million Dollar Baby is that it has an ending that some viewers may find surprising. The ending isn't that far removed from, say, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

It's only because I think the addition gets the balance wrong here that I have reservations about it. --Tony Sidaway 09:07, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think I quite understand you Tony Sidaway. Are you suggesting that interpretations of films by critics should be put on the critics' articles and not on the articles of the films they are commenting on? If the opinion of one critic is not significant, how many sources (These links may discuss in detail the plot of Million Dollar Baby )[65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] do you think it takes? ---- Pixelface (talk) 20:05, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I do not think this should be added, for two reasons. First, it's not a very common situation. Since Pixelface started contributing to this talk page, he has repeatedly mentioned the same isolated example (Ebert & Million Dollar Baby), without offering any others. Perhaps more like it could be found, but it clearly doesn't happen often. Guidelines are needed for frequently re-occurring issues, not for things that happen only rarely.

And secondly, in every article I can think of, the "Plot" section describes the plot, not other people's commentary about the plot. If a critic's opinion is important, it belongs in a section about the work's reception, not in the plot. Marc Shepherd 09:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Care to choose one or more of the films at Box office number-one films of 2007 (USA) so I could provide some more examples? --Pixelface (talk) 10:16, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I can not find it in the above discussion but where was it concluded that the section about "should this article contain spoilers" be removed? –– Lid^(Talk) 10:25, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with this proposal. I think it sufficient to instead say that should a work of fiction contain a twist or an ending that a good source (such as Mr Ebert above) has deemed notable enough to advise people to avoid information on, then editors should consider limiting mentions of such information to the Plot section (save where it might inform critical commentary elsewhere). As surely anyone reading a section titled Plot will realise it might, y'know, give details of said plot. Liquidfinale ^{(Ţ) (Ç) (Ŵ)} 10:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

"As surely anyone reading a section titled Plot will realise it might, y'know, give details of said plot." Are you sure about that? Expecting details is different than expecting spoilers. --Pixelface (talk) 10:19, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

In actual fact, you are indeed correct on this one point. Some people may think that the Plot section is something in the way of critical commentary on the plot, rather than a full synopsis. We should instead be titling them Plot summary in order to remove the ambiguity. Liquidfinale ^{(Ţ) (Ç) (Ŵ)} 13:27, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I can think of a limited number of places where this would be a good idea - a discussion of what was and wasn't marked with spoiler warnings in reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows seems interesting because the question of spoilers was so integral to the cultural reception of that book. But the mere fact of a spoiler warning, absent a larger critical context, is a matter for trivia sections, and you know how much we like trivia sections. Phil Sandifer 16:41, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

The RFC has the summary "Several editors have said plot summaries cannot cite reliable sources for interpretation." While interpretation should usually not go into a plot section but into an "Interpretation" section, this is certainly the wrong page for an RFC about that topic. Kusma (talk) 10:39, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

No, this is not the wrong page. It's about proposed additions to this guideline. Marc Shepherd said interpretations belong in the Critical reception section. Liquidfinale said "editors should consider limiting mentions of such information to the Plot section (save where it might inform critical commentary elsewhere)." And you have said interpretation should go into an Interpretation section. --Pixelface (talk) 12:19, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

What does this have to do with spoilers? Kusma (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler warnings in reliable sources are interpretations of films. If a spoiler warning precedes a plot description in a reliable source, it should be placed before the plot description in an article to keep that interpretation in context. --Pixelface (talk) 13:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

No. It should be placed in a section that talks about spoiler warnings if that discussion is important in the context of the film's reception. If the question of spoilers is not relevant in the context of a film's reception, then there is no need to mention this at all. It only serves as a spoiler warning, something Wikipedia does not use in its articles. Kusma (talk) 14:06, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler warnings are not a matter of reception. And Wikipedia has no policies on importance, nor relevance. If a reliable source uses a spoiler warning before a plot description, this interpretation should be mentioned in the article before the plot description to keep it in context — or I should say, if this is mentioned before the plot description, it shouldn't be moved by editors with a grudge. This guideline needs to make it clear that interpretations from reliable sources can be cited before plot descriptions — so they won't be removed by biased editors. This has nothing to do with editors' personal feelings. This is about citations. --Pixelface (talk) 14:13, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, you seem to be the only one I've ever seen arguing for this. You're also the only one I've ever seen who has had some issue with the "fact that headings aren't cited" or whatever it was. I'm not trying to insult you here, but could it be perhaps, that you are simply dead wrong about all of this? And as I said on the TFD page, the diff above is EXACTLY the reason the warnings were hugely paired down in the first place. The guy claims he had the ending spoiled...but then puts it the warning around the whole plot. How does that even help not spoil an ending? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:24, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

This guideline has ignored citations for quite some time now. I don't think I'm "dead wrong" to insist on citations. As encyclopedia editors, we should be writing articles based on citations. Citations underlie the policies of verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view. Editors who hold a grudge against spoiler warnings would never suggest spoiler warnings be cited because they don't want them in articles at all, cited or not. And yes, I did say that headings cannot be relied on since headings don't require citations. I don't see anything wrong with a spoiler warning preceding a plot summary, especially if the warning was published in a reliable source. It gives readers a choice. It's polite. It has a long history of use on the Internet. And most importantly, it's verifiable. A reader who hasn't seen a film doesn't know what he/she doesn't know. They don't know if reading the plot description will spoil the film. They can make an educated guess, and many editors and readers do — but as that diff shows, many readers do not. A spoiler warning right under a heading can be useful, and so can a spoiler warning before a certain paragraph. But have you ever glanced at text you haven't read yet or scanned ahead? Putting a spoiler warning right before a twist or a film's ending makes it fairly useless. Once you've read something, you can't unread it — and you can't know what a sentence says until you've read it. Are we writing this encyclopedia for readers or for editors who have a certain number of edits and know Wikipedia culture? If someone has already seen a film, they really don't need to read a plot summary anyway. So plot summaries are mainly for people who have not seen a film/read a book/played a video game, etc. A fictional work can be considered a future history. A book may have been written in the past, but when someone begins reading it, unread portions of the book take place in the future. If an author has created suspense or writes about some mystery, or if an author plans on surprising a reader or changing their perspective, to force readers of Wikipedia articles to know what happens before they read the book destroys what the author has created. Authors die, but their fictional works live on, for new people to discover. As encyclopedia editors, we don't need to be destroying what an author has created. We don't need to turn readers away from books. We don't need to turn readers away from films. We don't need to be writing readers' book reports for them. If you wrote a book, would you want people to be able to read the entire storyline on Wikipedia, find out the ending, and then decide not to buy the book? Plot summaries can only be provided under a claim of fair use, and should contain as little content as possible. If editors don't care about fair use and want to write as detailed plot summaries as they can, I won't stop them. If editors want to describe every twist in a fictional work or tell everyone the ending, I won't stop them. But I will insist on citing published spoiler warnings and mentioning them before plot summaries in articles. If a spoiler warning is published in a reliable source, editors' personal feelings about spoiler warnings being "insulting" or "silly" or "redundant" or "obvious" or "censorship" don't really matter. It's verifiable. A reliable source doesn't stop being reliable simply because they printed a spoiler warning. Editors should set aside any grudges they have against spoiler warnings and focus on citations. If I'm dead wrong about that, I don't really know what to say. --Pixelface (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, aside from Million Dollar Baby, what articles can you name for which this is even an issue? As far as I can recall, you've never cited any other example? Marc Shepherd (talk) 15:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Name a film, and I'll do some research. Off the top of my head, how about the Eastern Promises article? I seem to remember you editing that article and removing a spoiler tag and later removing the tag even though it cited a reliable source that used a spoiler warning. The tag may be gone, but the citation is still valid. --Pixelface (talk) 15:47, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, it's not my job to find the data to support your proposal, which has so far failed to attract much support. Guidelines exist to describe how a frequently-occurring editorial issue should be handled. So far, you haven't shown that this issue is at all common. Marc Shepherd (talk) 21:29, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I know it's not your job. I've already found citations for Million Dollar Baby, Eastern Promises, and No Country for Old Men. I told you to name a film and I'll see if I can find a spoiler warning in a reliable source. Is the {{current fiction}} tag a "frequently-occurring editorial issue"? No, it's not. The template appears in 27 articles. But this guideline was rewritten around it. WP:GUIDE says "A guideline article is any page that: (1) recommends actions that editors should either take or avoid; and (2) reflects consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception." I'm following the policies on verifiability, no original research, neutral point of view, the policy on What Wikipedia is not, the guideline on reliable sources, the guideline on writing about fiction, and the style guide for films. What more do you want? --Pixelface (talk) 13:12, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, what's immediately striking is that, for all three examples, the critic is Roger Ebert. Do we really need to revise our guideline for something that one critic has done three times? Even if he's done it 30 times or 300 times, it probably doesn't warrant discussion in our guideline unless other critics have done so regularly. Marc Shepherd (talk) 13:29, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

We're not talking about something that one critic has done a total of three times. There's Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today[73], Jeffrey Overstreet of Christianity Today[74], film critic Debbie Schlussel[75], Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice[76], Ian Grey of Baltimore City Paper[77], Tim Appelo of Seattle Weekly[78] — and that is just for one film, Million Dollar Baby. There's a column by FindLaw columnist Julie Hilden[79] that discusses how spoilers can damage the market for a film. If editors are going to reveal spoilers, and if editors are going to use spoiler warnings, this guideline should recommend a course of action: it is the spoiler guideline. Most film critics don't reveal spoilers regularly so there's really no need for most critics to use spoiler warnings. How about we insist on citing secondary sources for spoilers? --Pixelface (talk) 08:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Break

I oppose the implementation of reviews in Plot sections to warn of spoilers. Reviews are published so people can read about a film critic's perspective of a new film. These critics will vary in their approaches of how much of the storyline to divulge. For example, Roger Ebert said one should go into Before the Devil Knows You're Dead cold, yet other reviews will not say this and impart information that may or may not be considered spoiler-ish to the readership. So the question begs: Should we be liberal or conservative in our implementation of what critics say? I argue that we need to disregard the spoiler alert issue in its entirety. Wikipedia is not a film review. It is not supposed to tell the readership if a film is worth viewing or not. They can read the local newspaper or Rotten Tomatoes for that -- RT is placed in a great deal of film articles. Wikipedia's job in regard to films is to treat it from a historical perspective and not cater to the readership. Plot summaries, under WP:PLOT, are purely complementary to the article's content. Basically, it only exists to give shape to aspects like production, reception, etc. It does not exist to tell the readership what the film's about for the sake of seeing it, only for the sake of comprehending other information in the article. Lastly, film reviews combine opinion and plot detail, so highlighting spoilers within a review gives the readership a chance to skip a passage or two. In articles on Wikipedia, we make a very clear distinction between the plot and the critical reaction. Long as we've tried, there is no objective way to approach implementing spoilers short of coming up with code that allows a "Plot" section to be mostly hidden from view. I understand Pixelface's approach to resolve the matter by using reliable sources, but for the reasons I've explained above, the approach is still flawed. Wikipedia should not have started out concerning itself with spoilers because no matter how popular it is, it is intended to be a historical perspective of topics, fictional or otherwise. The best approach, seeing how discussions about spoilers are circuitous and subjective, is to apply Occam's razor -- to dismiss this issue and ultimately save us all a lot of grief. The earlier this is done, the better -- the readership will understand over time that Wikipedia is not for seeing if a film is worth watching or if a book is worth reading. It's for being educated about real-world context about the said topic. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 19:53, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

At the beginning, it was argued that spoiler warnings are condescending to the reader. So how is telling reader how to use Wikipedia not condescending? The bottom line is, having spoiler warnings is subjective matter, not objective, and should be treated as such, so there should be a real referendum between both parties. Samohyl Jan (talk) 06:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Erik, you said Wikipedia "is not supposed to tell the readership if a film is worth viewing or not" and then said "RT is placed in a great deal of film articles." What other purpose does including Rotten Tomatoes figures serve than letting readers know if a film is worth viewing or not? It lets readers know what critics thought of a film? And what purpose does that serve? It lets readers know if a film is worth viewing or not. I know Wikipedia is not a film review. We cite film reviews. If Wikipedia's job is to treat films from a historical perspective, why have articles on unreleased films? Why the {{future film}} tag? Why include plot summaries for recently released films? This is just information about a film. Any purpose or intent behind the information is "educational content." I don't think editors are in any place to say how the information can be used or not or should be used or not. WP:NOT#PLOT says film articles should not just contain plot summaries, but also sourced analysis. I cannot see why a notice that is common in film review after film review after film review should be excluded from all articles. If it appears in a reliable source, editors should be able to cite it. Any intent behind providing a plot summary is unrelated to what readers actually use them for. And I don't think you can approach films from a purely historical perspective. People watch films long after they are released. People watch films long after the writers and directors and actors are dead and buried. When someone begins watching a film, the story begins again. When writing about fiction, we write in the present tense. Events in a film are not just past events. They are past events in the sense that actors performed and their image was captured on film. But the actual story that a film tells is a future event. A person cannot know what is going to happen two years from now, but a person can know how a film is going to end. Should readers be forced to read how a film ends on Wikipedia? I realize nobody is forcing people to read Wikipedia articles, but once you've read something, you can't unread it. This is about what a typical person expects to find when they come upon a Wikipedia article. Surely editors who have been involved with editing Wikipedia for a long time know what to expect. But new readers don't. Are we writing this encyclopedia for the editors who know all of Wikipedia's "customs" or for the readers? Readers should be given a choice about the information that will be revealed to them about a fictional work. If a discussion about spoilers and spoiler warnings is subjective, editors should stay out of it and cite reliable sources. A plot summary of a fictional work provides zero real-world context. It's fiction. It never happened. Darth Vader isn't Luke's father. Darth Vader didn't tell Luke "I am your father." Darth Vader doesn't exist. David Prowse stood there in a costume and put out his hand. James Earl Jones spoke into a microphone in a recording studio. And George Lucas told him what to say. That is the real-world information. A plot summary of a fictional work has nothing to do with the real world. All fiction requires a suspension of disbelief. To take that away from readers is an attack on writers of fiction and an attack on fiction itself. The malicious intent behind revealing plot details to unaware people has got to stop. People who have seen a film really don't need to read a plot summary, they already know what happens. If I want to see a film and haven't seen it yet, I know to avoid Plot sections. But I am not the only person who reads Wikipedia. --Pixelface (talk) 12:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia cites film reviews to reflect how a film has been received, which is an integral part of its historical perspective. Rotten Tomatoes provides an independent way to gauge how a film has been received among a group of critics. It also provides links to the reviews, some of which are used to create the reception section. Since not all reviews are cited, a link to Rotten Tomatoes is provided. (Especially considering that for some articles, time hasn't been taken to write any reception section at all. I know you've done much better than most, Pixelface.) I'm not sure if I understand your arguments about how the Plot section is read, though. I know that the section does not provide real-world context -- it's everything else in the article that does, and the Plot section serves to complement that context. Certainly, people will read the plot summaries for different reasons, but the way WP:PLOT explains it, there is zero implication that plot detail needs to be shielded from the readership. No one has "malicious intent" about spoiling the readers, but Wikipedia articles on fictional works are not intended to present teasers. This is an encyclopedia, and the plot summaries exist to back the real-world context. They are purely complementary -- it may or may not be necessary to read the summaries for a full understanding of the real-world context, but it is still there to serve as the fictional background that the real-world context aimed to create (i.e., production) or to receive (i.e., reception). I don't think it's fair to gauge the impact of a lack of spoiler alerts. You've mentioned how film reviews set a precedent not to spoil the reader as the critic shares his or her opinion about the film. However, I've explained why this precedent does not transfer well to Wikipedia articles. My ultimate suggestion is that Wikipedia needs to set its own precedent due to the clear distinction between Plot and Critical reaction. It's possible that there will be collateral -- I imagine that the lack of censorship on Wikipedia has miffed a few folks. Yet we don't cater to them to censor vocabulary, and we don't cater to those who want to know just this much about a film before ultimately viewing it. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 17:50, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Erik, you said Wikipedia "is not supposed to tell the readership if a film is worth viewing or not" but that is exactly what a Critical reception section does and the style guide for films supports it. I know that WP:PLOT does not imply readers need to be shielded from plot details, but interpretations by critics that certain plot details are best discovered by viewers themselves is sourced analysis. Editors should be free to cite critics who use spoiler warnings and place that interpretation at the beginning of plot summaries. I know I'm going to do that, and if this guideline doesn't say that's allowed, I know my edits are going to be reverted by editors with a personal grudge against spoiler warnings, citation or not. And yes, there is malicious intent behind spoiling fictional works for people who haven't seen them yet. That's evident based on past edits people have made[80], and the whole "SNAPE KILLED ---" phenomenon, on Wikipedia[81], and elsewhere on the Internet (as seen at The Great Dumbledore Dies Meme of 2005 at Encyclopedia Dramatica). Spoiler warnings are in no way censorship. No information is being hidden or taken away. A spoiler warning is censorship like a traffic sign is censorship — not at all. --Pixelface (talk) 08:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Malicious intent is irrelevant to this discussion. No amount of spoiler warnings will prevent someone's inserting "HE'S A BLOODY GHOST!" or somesuch into the lead. Liquidfinale ^{(Ţ) (Ç) (Ŵ)} 09:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that spoiler warnings won't prevent someone inserting something like that into the lead. That sort of text would probably be reverted by a vandal bot or reverted by another editor as vandalism. Do you think an editor adding that to a lead has good intentions? Malicious intent is very relevant to a discussion about spoiling fictional works for people. Certain people don't want to find out how a fictional work ends, and other people will gleefully ruin it for them. It's common[82] on the Internet. Revealing huge plot twists in articles for new readers to walk into is just as malicious. The idea that readers should find out for themselves that articles contain spoilers (plot details that could affect their enjoyment of a fictional work), the idea that every reader needs to be "burned" once to learn their lesson, is malicious. It destroys what an author has created. Editors who have opposed spoiler warnings have shown their malicious intent: "Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father; Rosebud is a sled; Jesus dies; the boat fucking sinks", "Readers will learn very quickly to take our section titles seriously", "Tell me... how many people did I just 'spoil' that for? He was also Luke Skywalker's father! Wow, huh?", "if anyone wants to complain about how Cinderella now has been ruined for them, they can write a userspace essay and rant about how "useful" the warnings were there", etc. This is about articles on fictional works *spoiling* those fictional works for readers. When a person wants to see a film and reads a Wikipedia article about the film and accidentally reads something they were not expecting (like, a climax in the story or how the film ends), the motivation to spend money to see that film vanishes. Why should they pay money for a fictional work when they already know the whole story? --Pixelface (talk) 11:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, perhaps it's time to let it go. You've brought up this idea on this page and on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines, and faced overwhelming opposition. Arguing the same points over and over again with increasing vehemence is probably not going to turn the tide.

Part of the problem is that you seem to be trying to find a back-door way to reverse the deletion of Template:spoiler:

Should readers be forced to read how a film ends on Wikipedia? I realize nobody is forcing people to read Wikipedia articles, but once you've read something, you can't unread it. This is about what a typical person expects to find when they come upon a Wikipedia article. Surely editors who have been involved with editing Wikipedia for a long time know what to expect. But new readers don't. Are we writing this encyclopedia for the editors who know all of Wikipedia's "customs" or for the readers? Readers should be given a choice about the information that will be revealed to them about a fictional work.

These are precisely the arguments in favor of spoiler warnings in general. All you're trying to do is bring spoiler warnings back in that miniscule percentage of cases where there is a citation from a critic. Even if your position somehow gained consensus, it would be of use only for the 0.01% of fictional works where a critic's spoiler warning is available to be cited. Marc Shepherd (talk) 18:18, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Time to let it go? I wouldn't even be here if a cabal of editors hadn't shown up at Eastern Promises and edit warred. I'd still be contributing to the namespace. I'm here now and I'm not leaving. You're not going to rid of me. I'm glad the {{spoiler}} template got deleted. Now all the anti-spoiler warning goons can't just click Whatlinkshere and go on their daily removal sprees. I came here and was disgusted that 2 editors could almost singlehandedly push their POV across 45,000 articles. There was no consensus to delete the {{spoiler}} template in May and the constant suppression that went on is sickening. I'm not trying to find a "back-door." I contribute based on citations. If the number of spoiler warnings appearing in reliable sources is really so miniscule, what are you worried about? --Pixelface (talk) 09:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention those critics who have said words to the effect of "this film's so crummy I don't mind spoiling it; the butler did it!" which I have seen happen a couple of times, most memorably with The Forgotten I think (no, the butler didn't do it). Would the proposal mean I could prefix the plot section of that film with such a statement, should I wish to? I jest, but a strict interpretation of the guideline would allow it. Liquidfinale ^{(Ţ) (Ç) (Ŵ)} 18:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead. I won't follow you and revert all your edits. Maybe you've already seen every episode of Babylon 5 and think the story is obvious. Maybe nobody will ever watch Babylon 5 again so no spoiler warning is necessary. Maybe you've never heard of spoiler warnings. Maybe film critics in Rotherham don't use spoiler warnings in their film reviews, but many film critics in the United States do — and I think your anti-American bias is showing, Steve. --Pixelface (talk) 09:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

After this incivility, I think I would be well within my rights to eschew the assumption of good faith and call you a gibbering idiot. However, I will address your points. In the Babylon 5 article you mention, the plot summary appears in a section titled, wow, Plot summary, so I would think it would be obvious what that section contained. Secondly, it is not "anti-American bias" (as you accuse) to exclude US ratings information from film articles. It's trivia, and it's US-centric, unless the rating is especially notable and commented upon in some way. Many US-based editors have reached the same conclusion, and indeed, I merely followed their lead on this. Best regards, Liquidfinale ^{(Ţ) (Ç) (Ŵ)} 09:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

This proposal just encourages bad editing in order to incorporate a general spoiler warning over the entire plot section. Need I remind you that the community by in large rejected tagging entire plot sections with spoiler warnings. Also Ebert's "warning" is far too general to be useful in determining if a plot detail is a spoiler. Ebert even stated that he started using "spoiler warnings" before going into plot details do to reader complaints. So his use of the spoiler tag is nothing more then a CYA action on his part and should not be interpreted as thing more then that.

Also mentioning that Ebert gave a spoiler warning when describing the plot is undue weight. It asserts that Ebert's opinion of what is or isn't a spoiler is more important then other reviewers. But also, such opinions don't belong in a "Plot summery" section, but a "Critical reception" section if the opinion is relevant.

Take for example Million Dollar Baby, the fact that Ebert pleaded with people to not revel the plot to those who haven't seen the move is something that clearly belongs in the "Critical reception" section, but not the "Plot summery". --Farix (Talk) 19:48, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Writing from citations is not bad editing. And when you say "the community by in large", are you referring to David Gerard and Tony Sidaway? Ebert's purpose for using spoiler warnings is irrelevant. WP:V and WP:RS say nothing about a source's reasons. If one critic is undue weight, how many critics does it take? Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today[83]? Jeffrey Overstreet of Christianity Today[84]? Film critic Debbie Schlussel[85]? Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice[86]? Ian Grey of Baltimore City Paper[87]? Tim Appelo of Seattle Weekly[88]? Interpretations are not forbidden from plot summaries. Secondary sources are not forbidden from plot summaries. The idea that Plot sections should contain zero citations and be written by fans who just saw a film is ridiculous. A spoiler warning is not an evaluation whether a film is good or bad, it's an interpretation of the plot, and it is sourced analysis. --Pixelface (talk) 09:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, the plain fact is that Plot summary sections generally do not contain analysis. Actually, I can't think of any that do (unless you've added them in the last 12 hours). No one is saying that a plot summary cannot contain citations. But what we are saying is that a Plot summary should contain a plot summary, not analysis. Marc Shepherd (talk) 13:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

All of that is good stuff to put in a "Critical reception" section or a section analyzing the plot, maybe a brief mention in the lead, such as "The film sparked a debate among critics about whether it is appropriate to revel the film's major plot twist in their reviews." You can then go in to the debate in a separate section further down the article. But it is simply out of place to put it in a "Plot summery". Analyst of a plot should be separated from the plot summery. --Farix (Talk) 14:31, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Why's it out of place? There's no guideline or policy which says that plot summaries have to be in-universe fanstuff.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there is. The manual of style for film articles describes plot sections as simple descriptions of what happens in the film. With regard to citations, the current version reads, "Plot summaries do not normally require citations; the film itself is the source, as the accuracy of the plot description can be verified by watching the film. An exception to this rule may be films containing plot details that are unclear or open to interpretation, in which case the different interpretations should be sourced to reliable sources." It also has a good bit of information about spoilers, etc. that might be informative to this discussion. (And before anybody rushes to check the history, I'll tell you right now that Liquid made a single edit to remove an unnecessary word.) --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 14:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's an ignorable trial balloon. Cop 663 added that paragraph on Nov 8, to be presumed as a preemptive strike against the spoiler citation issue Pixelface first mentioned on Oct 23.

"before anybody rushes to check the history" This guide paragraph didn't pass the 'coincidental' smell test so I checked anyway. Sure enough, you were successfully meta-gamed (a rules change in the middle of the game).

FYI, the tool I used to find this stealth edit is "Compare selected versions". The 1,850,000 byte spoiler-mass-removals debate began in May 2007. I clicked the May 4 button; with the current Nov 17 button already selected, I clicked the "Compare..." bar, looked for the paragraph, and found it added between those dates. Then I clicked other date buttons in a binary search pattern to locate the author, whose edit summary used a synonym not found in the edit itself. Milo 20:48, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That's just a Wikiproject guideline, they've little weight, especially when it makes no real effort to justify itself. The upshot of 'simple' plot descriptions is that film's plots cannot be described in meaningful language. Twist endings, climatic final scenes, musical scenes, fast-paced title sequences, presumably all of these get turned into bland prose with little relation to the actual on-screen events.--Nydas^(Talk) 17:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Nydas, why do you ask for a guideline or a policy, then write off the style guideline that's been provided? In addition, plot summaries exclude interpretations because interpretations are just that -- interpretations. What if there are different ways to look at a film, like with 2001? What if only one aspect of a film needs to be studied? The specific plot detail can be re-summoned in a single sentence in an Interpretations section. Plot summaries are essentially neutral and serve as background information for every other aspect of a film article. Even independent voices will have different ideas of "meaningful language" in a plot -- one could think that a certain event was the turning point, while another could think the same of another event. Also, why is there this accusation of "in-universe fanstuff"? Such a description is not appropriate for film articles, which is appropriately structured to cover real-world context about them -- production, reception, even trivia, as indiscriminate as such sections may be. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 17:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

"write off the style guideline that's been provided?" (e/c) As noted above it was a preemptive strike trial balloon and can be ignored. It also fails verification policy, as detailed below, and needs to be removed. Milo 23:42, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

A plot summary guideline which forbids twist endings (and presumably other narrative devices) from being mentioned is a violation of neutral point of view. It's specifically forbidden to invent 'intermediate' views, which is what you're advocating here. One of the few anti-spoiler tag arguments to have intellectual merit was that they encouraged articles to be broken up in undesirable ways; is this now being cast aside?

It's common practice to strive for an out-of-universe perspective, yet the guideline forbids the use of certain out-of-universe terminology, because it's an 'interpretation'. Even if the creator says a twist ending is a twist ending, it's still not allowed. This is inevitably going to open the door for fans to add their 'neutral' plot summaries (the film guideline pointedly ignores this).--Nydas^(Talk) 21:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

In response to jonny-mt, An exception to this rule may be films containing plot details that are unclear or open to interpretation, in which case the different interpretations should be sourced to reliable sources. That is what I am talking about. I was going by the style guide for films when I made this proposal. And I was going by WP:NOT#PLOT which says articles should have sourced analysis. If a critic has made the interpretation that foreknoweldge of certain plot details will affect the experience of viewing a film, and if that interpretation has been published in a reliable source, editors should be free to cite that source and this guideline should make that clear so those citations are not removed by editors with a personal grudge against spoiler warnings. --Pixelface (talk) 07:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Pixel, you seem to be conflating a few separate issues. Can a critic's opinion about spoilers be included in an article? Yes, absolutely, if it is relevant. But, having located the opinion and established its relevance, where in the article should it go? The answer is in a section on critical reception, not in a section called plot summary. The reason is that a section called plot summary is for summarizing the plot. Assessments of the plot's impact on viewers belong in another section. Marc Shepherd (talk) 17:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

No guideline says where it should go. Secondary sources are not forbidden from plot summaries. And the policy on no original research says interpretations must be sourced to reliable sources that make these interpretations. A spoiler warning is not an evaluation of whether a film is good or bad. It does not indicate how a film was received by critics. It's an interpretation of a plot. Therefore, it should go in the plot summary. And since it appears before a plot description in a critic's review, it should be placed before the plot description in the article to keep that interpretation in context. You can't say spoilers belong in a Plot section and then exclude secondary sources from that section. This guideline needs to make it clear that interpretations are allowed in Plot sections so citations from reliable sources that use spoiler warnings are not removed or moved by editors with a personal grudge. --Pixelface (talk) 14:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

You're right that none of our guidelines addresses this specific point. That's because, as far as I know, you are the first and only editor to have suggested the idea. By now, it's surely apparent that the proposal has met with overwhelming opposition. You're perfectly welcome to keep suggesting it, but I would recommend that you consider another approach. Don't take it personally; no one is right every time. Marc Shepherd (talk) 15:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

We are not primarily writing movie/book/x reviews, but discussing movies/ / , and there is a difference. Where has there ever been a discussion of a movie/ / in a serious non-review source that has a spoiler? If someone does want reviews, they are abundant on the web, and, at the judgment of the author, they will contain spoilers. People coming to an encyclopedia expect an encyclopedia--if they did not realise that WP is actually one--and many people apparently don't--they will soon find out, and our references to reviews will teach them where reviews can be found. Marc is right that discussion of the critics reaction as of the audience reaction belongs in WP, but in their appropriate separate sections. How extensive such details will be would obviously depend on the importance of the work, or of the reaction to it. DGG (talk) 00:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I hope you didn't mean to imply what I'm inferring — that for whatever stylistic opinion reasons, as well as your soft pedal promotion of the clique's unconsensed reader punishment and expulsion theory — you and Marc would condone violation of WP:NOR-PSTS policy, by preventing the placement of secondary source citation reference numbers within a primary sourced section of Wikipedia? Milo 04:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Your tone does not strike me as civil, Milo. Can I ask you to revise your statement to focus on the content, rather than the editors? —Erik (talk • contrib) - 04:22, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

{??} I posted my (Milo 04:11) regrettably unaware of the little food fight that broke out above; so despite your concern, my tone is adequate. A policy-adherence discussion is of necessity editor-focused, so there's no need to revise. I would like DGG and Marc to answer my question now. Milo 12:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Milo's comment was at his usual level of civility. Naturally, he depends on eccentric and wholly unsupported assumptions ("clique" and "reader punishment and expulsion theory"), but we are all used to that by now.

To answer the question: No, I was not saying that a plot summary section cannot contain secondary source citations. I was saying that a plot summary section should summarize the plot. Critics' opinions about the plot's impact on viewers belong in another section. Marc Shepherd (talk) 14:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Notable spoiler verification as policy

"Plot summaries are essentially neutral" That's an illusion. Plot summaries (and "plot synopses" which have the same definition) are significantly biased by big publishing/Hollywood profit pressure, as well as fan pressure, to selectively leave out spoiler details. Two posters claimed every detail can be a spoiler. Even if one doesn't accept that extreme view, it still points out that all plots, plot summaries, and plot synopses (plus "Story" or "Overview") have non-neutral bias about which details to exclude. Only a "plot compendium" is defined as having everything and is therefore unbiased by definition.

I tried to add suggested use of "Plot compendium" to the spoiler guide and was reverted with the catch 22 fallacy reasoning that Wikipedia doesn't have plot compendiums. So things can't change, because things haven't changed, even when I changed them.

The most important reason that Pixelface is correct, that spoilers are citable in the plot, is that plot sections are primary source research. Primary source research is acceptable if it's only descriptive and carefully used. But at Wikipedia, primary source research must yield to secondary source research where that's possible. Ok, it's partly possible. In however claimed few cases, it's partly possible, and WP:NOR#Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources (a.k.a., WP:PSTS) policy calls for it to be done.

The consensus is, at Wikipedia spoilers should be included. How is it verified that they have been included? Prior to May 2007, editors identified them with spoiler notices that were agreed by consensus. The 45,000 classic spoiler notices are now gone, the template is now gone, so spoiler-inclusion/exclusion bias now goes unknown, unchecked, uncited, and therefore unverified. This is a potential policy violation in plot sections.

Now combine these ideas:

• Industry and fans are biased to leave spoiler details out. Such bias is insidious and inexact to define without identification by a local consensus art jury or notable citations.

• WP consensus is to include spoiler details in plot sections. Yet there are no verifications of the notable spoilers with cite numbers in the plot section.

• Only plot compendiums are all-details neutral, yet Wikipedia has only biased, details-omitted plots, plot summaries, and plot synopses (plus "story" or "overview" ilk).

• How do WP editors and readers know that notable spoilers have been included? They can't, because spoilers are no longer in-article verifiable by the local consensus art jury, because the tools to do so have been removed.

• The suggestion of placing spoiler citations in another section leaves the plot section's primary research incompliant of policy mandate for secondary research when possible.

• What's a replacement verification to comply with WP:NOR-PSTS? (That's a policy, not a guide.) Simple, when a notable spoiler citation is available, hang a cite reference number on the spoiling detail in the plot section. If the citation is notable but non-specific ('don't tell anyone about what happens in this movie', etc.), then the cite number gets attached to the plot section header, or hung free floating just under that header.

Milo 23:42, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It's dead, Jim. --Tony Sidaway 17:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

"Leonard McCoy#"He's dead, Jim." My stars, you're right! You've identified at least five notable spoilers, 36% of total mentions, where McCoy was wrong or hoaxing death and the audience didn't know it. There might even be spoiler citations to them somewhere in 40 years worth of reliably sourced offline commentary. Milo 22:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Spoiler Template Deletion OverturnedEndorsed at DRV

Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_November_14

Well the deletion has been overturned so I've reverted the guideline to the pre-template deletion version. I think we should all take a breather and have a think about where we should go from here. Tomgreeny (talk) 19:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

The guidelines have been reverted back to the current version (not by me, but I don't particularly mind, either). Although it's certainly headed towards restoration and relisting, I think we should wait until the DRV closes before reverting all the changes that have already been made. In the meantime, though, a small break might not be a bad idea. --jonny-mt^(t)_(c)Tell me what you think! 01:49, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

DRV regular Xoloz closed the discussion with a result of "endorse". Kusma (talk) 15:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I see that Xoloz didn't bother to edit Marc Shepard/s final comment which got cut in half by the following and last commenter before he archived the discussion .Garda40 (talk) 16:41, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

It's displaying correctly, as far as I can tell. Marc Shepherd (talk) 16:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

You seemed to have added part of it above it too. I was about to delete the fragment myself, but it was closed. It's probably not a big deal. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes, I see it now. That was my mistake. I believe I got distracted while editing, and when I returned to the screen, lost track of where I was. Anyhow, it's not a big deal at this point. Marc Shepherd (talk) 17:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

As the comment was unsigned and could be confused with a following comment by User:Lindacious, I struck it out and tailed it with a duplicate of the signature from the full version of the comment made in the same edit. --Tony Sidaway 22:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

The fact that we have two different closures of the same DRV, with pretty much the same comments when both admins reviewed it, pretty clearly shows how messed up this is. Regardless of how you feel about this, the community has just been denied it's right to decide this matter, and that is an insult to everyone involved. DRV is being abused at this point, as it's only meant to review the merits of the closure of the TfD. -- Ned Scott (talk) 22:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what more you would want. The second closing admin had no involvement in the spoiler wars to date. If you wanted the decision made by a neutral party, you couldn't do much better. Although consensus doesn't mean voting, there was considerably more support endorsing the deletion than for overturning it.

The fact is that on this page, on the TfD page, and on the DRV page, the overwhelming majority of the discussion has come from just a handful of people. Given the viral nature of Internet discourse, the deafening silence from the rest of the community is telling. It's safe to guess that most are happy with the outcome, or more likely, they don't care. Marc Shepherd (talk) 22:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Deafening silence? At the TFD, 22 people argued to keep and 22 people argued to delete. Given that the template appeared on less than 11 articles at the time instead of 45,000, I think it's quite telling. --Pixelface (talk) 06:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed just now I examined the tfd discussion, and noted that roughly half of the kilobyte count was due solely to the contributions of two editors who have also contributed a lot to the discussion on this page. Checking the deletion review I'm therefore not surprised that those two editors contributed one-third of the kilobyte count to that debate. Other familiar faces (on both sides) also contributed significant amounts of verbiage. Comment from outside this tight-knit group was forthcoming in both the deletion debate and the review, and the result of the process does seem to reflect the opinions expressed, though not perhaps in proportion to the amount of typing. --Tony Sidaway 23:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Ned, Xoloz closed the DRV only way he could given the comments of all those who participated. The consensus of those who participated in the DRV was to endorse the deletion. Even if there were problem with Guy's closer of the TfD, the people who reviewed the closure didn't see fit to overturn it. That's just how WP:CONSENSUS works, warts and all. I also don't think a second DRV[89] is going to help matters and will probably result in a speedy closed. --Farix (Talk) 23:46, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

"Xoloz closed the DRV only way he could" If that was true, then JoshuaZ wouldn't have made the opposite close from Xoloz, the way I read it.

Xoloz short-sheeted the five-day debate time rule by 9 hours, 15 minutes, but at least I've found no evidence that he had a conflict of interest like JoshuaZ did. On appeal by me and kybldmstr, JoshuaZ did withdraw his COI close and recuse himself, so I consider him qualified for Arbcom election.

"consensus doesn't mean voting" Sometimes it does, sometimes not. Xoloz interpreted consensus as a 2/3 majority, and JoshuaZ interpreted consensus using the "good answer" that bias and process rule-breaking by the Nov 8 TFD closer, overrule even a large majority during DRV.

I'm not comfortable with either interpretation. I suggest that, in practice, WP:CONSENSUS is a concept that can be arbitrarily interpreted as either majoritarian voting or "good answer" judging. In his own terms, Xoloz uses both [90]. But because consensus is arbitrary, it's hard to test it the way a recount can test an election. Therefore, as the spoiler police demonstrated, consensus can also be ex parte manufactured behind a smokescreen to support a preexisting POV.

The 2/3-some DRV vote endorsing abusive process demonstrates that majoritarian voting doesn't work when the issues are whether due process rules were followed. The DRV should be a "good answer" judging process, since it functions as an appeals court. I think that's why the real world separates powers among process-trained courts, citizen legislatures, and a mostly hired executive bureaucracy. Milo 08:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Milo that the ever-changing meaning of "consensus" is no credit to the community. I often think we would be far better off if we would just candidly admit that in some situations consensus does mean voting. But I am usually shouted down whenever I say that. Marc Shepherd (talk) 13:47, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Majoritarian rule works if and only if your concern is "X or not X?" If you want restrictions on how to arrive at the answer to that question, majority rule is useless. -Amarkov moo! 14:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I initially had to do a double take when I first saw Milomedes's complain about JoshuaZ's first closing and accusing JoshuaZ of bias. JoshuaZ closed the DRV in Milomedes's favor after all, and yet Milomedes complained. Then when Xoloz's closed the DRV with an entirely different result because he used a more literal method of determining consensus, Milomedes still complains because he didn't get the outcome he wanted. At this point, I don't think that Milomedes doesn't know or doesn't care what he wants and is simply complaining just to keep things going. --Farix (Talk) 14:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

"I ... think that Milomedes doesn't know or doesn't care what he wants" Then you haven't been reading what I've repeatedly written. I want a clean and predictable due process for determining the outcome of community disagreements over consensus. I want compromise for the spoiler issues themselves where there is clearly no consensus, nor even evidence of a majority for anti-spoiler-notice POV. Of the two, due process outcomes dwarf symbolic spoiler issues in importance.

I consider JoshaZ's recusal to be a benefit for the community. I'm still studying Xoloz' complicated decision process and result. He suggests his decision was not that literal.

Whatever your AGF intentions, you appear extreme and uncompromising "to keep things going". Milo 20:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Milomedes knows exactly what he/she wants. I can't speak for Milomedes, but maybe Milomedes is concerned about conflicts of interest. Neutral point of view applies to all editors. If Milomedes hadn't brought it up to JoshuaZ, the TFD probably would have stayed overturned, which Milomedes supported. But having an admin on your side to close a debate in your favor is not the way to go about things. Admins should not close debates they've already prejudged. All these guidelines and policies and rules and discussions are totally meaningless if admins are going to make sweeping decisions according to their own personal whim. Admins are merely human, they're not dictators. The deletion review was about abuse of process, not one side winning or losing at all costs. The result is meaningless if the process is rotten. You fail to realize that. --Pixelface (talk) 06:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Milomedes has scored one of the most memorable own goals in Wikipedia history. He had the outcome he wanted, and complained anyway. Marc Shepherd (talk) 15:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Self-consistent Jeffersonian governance philosophy is always a shock to those raised to view community politics as a zero-sum field game. Milo 20:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You still don't get it. This is about administrators acting unilaterally. Do you really have no clue why Milomedes would notify JoshuaZ? Have you read WP:NPOV or WP:COI? Do you think sports should be refereed by team members? Getting the result you want is meaningless if the judges are already on your side. --Pixelface (talk) 06:41, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll probably get called out for this, but User_talk:Gene_Poole#Milomedes is quite telling. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:22, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You mean the part where Gene Poole offered absolutely no proof or diffs? --Pixelface (talk) 07:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

If you would like to enter mediation with me I would be honored to do so. We have shared interests that you know nothing about. Milo 20:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Nothing there that hasn't been said before. --Tony Sidaway 18:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Are you endorsing a harrassment campaign in payback for my reporting of a legal threat against another editor? Milo 20:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I oppose any form of harassment. If my comments have inadvertently aided or abetted such a campaign, I apologise. I withdraw the comment for the time being. --Tony Sidaway 12:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Request For Comment opened at WP:PW regarding spoilers and sources

[91]. Per a comment on the ANI board, I am informing you guys about this in case you may wish to comment. Thanks, Davnel03 21:14, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to merge this guideline back to WP:NDT

The effect of this guideline is that it is now completely consistent with Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles (aka WP:NDT and WP:NDA). It remains for me to propose formally that we merge this guideline to that one by replacing it with a redirect and perhaps adding a sentence or two from this one into that. This talk page and its extensive archives would remain separate, and the merge could still be undone at a future date, should consensus shift again. --Tony Sidaway 13:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason to redirect. This guideline exists to provide recommendations to editors on how to handle spoilers and spoiler warnings. Spoiler warnings are not disclaimers. And spoiler warnings that appear in reliable sources are not disclaimers. If this guideline is redirected, your TonyBot crawls and listings of pages that contain the word spoiler would not be supported by any policy or guideline. Why are you trying to bury this guideline and it's extensive talk page history? --Pixelface (talk) 15:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't really see the need to merge at this point. Marc Shepherd (talk) 15:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

No merge or redirect. In any case, a merge to the Wikipedia WP:NDT legal disclaimers makes no logical sense. Per dictionary definition (M-W.com disclaimer (legal) (also see Disclaimer)), spoiler notices don't refer to a hazardous risk (which disappointment is not) and therefore aren't legal disclaimers — despite the widespread popular misconception. WP:NDT tacitly admits that by making spoiler notices an exception acceptable in articles. Milo 18:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Spoilers, despite the arguments above, do fall under our disclaimer guideline. I don't anticipate any change to the current situation in the near future, and since it doesn't encompass spoiler tagging and hasn't done in practical terms for some months now I thought it might be a good idea to merge. Merge isn't the consensus here so I withdraw the suggestion for now. Perhaps in the new year the case for merge will seem more obvious. --Tony Sidaway 18:58, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Secondary Spoiler citations in primary research Plot sections

16:42, 24 November 2007 Pixelface (3,576 bytes) (revert. consensus on this talk page does not invalidate policy)

16:46, 24 November 2007 Marc Shepherd(2,779 bytes) (Undid revision 173505529 by Pixelface (talk) Revert...there is no such policy)

Pixelface inclusively added and Marc inclusively deleted:
"Articles on fictional works should offer sourced analysis. The opinion that certain information will spoil someone's enjoyment of a fictional work is one possible interpretation. On Wikipedia, interpretations must be attributed to reliable sources that make these interpretations in order to prevent original research. When a reliable source (such as a newspaper or magazine) uses a spoiler warning in a review of a fictional work (such as a film, book, video game, comic book, etc), editors can mention who gave the spoiler warning and cite the review and place it at the beginning of a plot summary.
" Example: When describing the plot of the film, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave a spoiler warning.[92]"

I agree that there is a strong policy case underlying Pixelface's edit. Marc seems to have carelessly placed himself in the position of challenging core Wikipedia WP:NOR-PSTS citation policy, which if he persists could lead to an RFCU on him, as well as censure at Village pump/policy. Perhaps less blind challenge and more thoughtful realization would be useful to the discussion. Milo 18:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

There's an overwhelming policy case. Intermediate, artificially neutral viewpoints aren't allowed under WP:NPOV. One of the few valid complaints about spoiler warnings was that they could cause articles to be structured in weird ways. Now we've got the anti-spoiler faction arguing for references to narrative devices to be cleansed from the summary of those narratives, and to be dumped somewhere else.--Nydas^(Talk) 20:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Nydas, can I suggest toning down the "us against them" mentality? It's a rather combative attitude, and I don't think any of us want this discussion to turn uncivil. In addition, Nydas, no one is opposing sourced analysis. The plot summary is purely complementary to articles about fictional topics. Sourced analysis is intended for the fictional topic in general -- it does not directly support the plot summary that is present in the article. As WP:PLOT states, articles about fictional topics should have real-world context. Plot summaries are an afterthought, in a manner of speaking. Thus, it is not appropriate to re-focus real-world context (in this case, a reviewer mentioning a spoiler for his own piece of writing) on an aspect of the article that is complementary. When we write real-world context, we write it about the topic at large, not specifically about what is available in a plot summary. Like I've said before, there is a clear distinction between real-world context (may it be production information or critical reaction) and the plot summary. Thus, unlike a film critic's review, there is no need to warn the reader of being spoiled due to the appropriately identified section headings. If the Critical reaction section were to have a film critic's review focus on the details of a film's ending, then there would need to be separate discussion about how to approach including that review. Here, I'm not sure why there is talk of cleansing and dumping -- beyond the consensus to remove spoiler warnings from plot summaries, there is nothing else that is being deprived from these complementary sections. Rather, there appear to be approaches to amend the removal of the spoiler warning, but as I've explained above, real-world context is intended to address the topic at large, not the in-universe information that complements the article under the appropriate section heading. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 22:15, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Your personal interpretation of WP:PLOT doesn't address my point about WP:NPOV being violated. Artificially neutral or intermediate viewpoints are not permitted. Pushing mainstream viewpoints out of plot summaries is an example of that.--Nydas^(Talk) 08:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Masterful glossing and distraction, but I don't buy it. Your bottom line position is an attempt to substitute guide-level style opinions for WP:NOR-PSTS secondary-sourced analysis-citation policy requirements. My bottom line is that secondary citation reference numbers cannot be kept out of primary research plot sections,

no matter how any guide reads. Milo 02:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

You really need to be banned from WP, Milo. You make my head explode. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:23, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Hm, this time it could be the hyphenated phrases. I've usually explained all those details previously, so it's a way of summarizing in a sentence. It's a style adapted to the constant flow of editors who've only read the last thing I wrote.

Ok, you're a classical music editor. At Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring ballet score (non-music editors may find interest in a description of the Paris, 1913, audience riot it caused; ¶3), here's the quote from George Perle: "intersecting of inherently non-symmetrical diatonic elements with inherently non-diatonic symmetrical elements seems...the defining principle of the musical language of Le Sacre and the source of the unparalleled tension and conflicted energy of the work". Music people write like that, so why can't I? Milo 07:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Can you explain why real-world context should focus on a complementary section about the topic rather than the topic itself? I really don't see how I've glossed and distracted, and I really do not appreciate how you have not assumed good faith about my explanation. Please respond with your arguments about why my points are invalid, rather than determining me to be the enemy and assuming off the bat that all my explanations are to maliciously draw away from your goal. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 03:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, AGF, you are well-intended in writing what turned out to be masterfully glossy and distracting. Viewed positively, it's a talent that's appreciated and lucrative at an ad agency. Go for it.

As persuasive debate, your explanation is wikilawyering – generally understood as the attempt to defeat higher-level principles or concepts by arguing lower-level concepts or details. With that understood as my position, there is no need to engage in a point-by-point debate.

I'm offended by your casual escalation of rhetoric to include a presumptive attribution of war metaphors to my determinations. I likewise publicly criticized JzG/Guy's disturbing TfD close – this may be a great debate, but it's not a war. IMHO, you need a wikivacation. Milo 07:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Milo, WP:LAWYER says, "Occasionally, editors who engage in semantic discussions about the language of a policy or guideline... will be accused of WikiLawyering. In such cases, it may make sense instead to assume good faith and engage in the discussion productively rather than tar those editors with the WikiLawyering brush." I understand your public criticism of the TfD close, but your word choice in getting your perspective across strikes me as counterproductive. In this discussion, you tell me to get a wikivacation, which strikes me as uncooperative. I've presented my points about the distinction of the plot summary from other aspects of an article, and you are welcome to refute them. However, if your combative attitude keeps up, I will not respond to you any longer. Others are free to weigh in on this particular aspect of the discussion. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 14:08, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

←"editors who engage in semantic discussions ... will be accused of WikiLawyering." Quite so. Most editors don't know the difference between lawyering and wikilawyering, and you are among them. I take your point that you didn't realize it, but nonetheless, you were inadvertently wikilawyering, and your entire argument fails for that reason.

"...you tell me to get a wikivacation, which strikes me as uncooperative." Let's check the record to see whether a wikivacation for you might be an appropriately cooperative opinion.

Pixelface (12:39, 19 Nov) and you (Erik 17:50, 19 Nov) engaged in a lengthy, unparagraphed debate. I didn't read either, because at a glance they seemed tangential to my position that a guide-level argument can not trump WP:NOR-PSTS. You wrote no more posts for about two days. I hadn't paid any attention to you, one way or another. I'm not even sure I'd ever seen your username before. You are certainly not a regular at WP:Talk Spoiler.

I skipped way down, and in the process I missed the little two post incivility skirmish. Even though you weren't involved, I infer it got it you charged up, since that's my only explanation for what you did subsequently that suggests your need for a wikivacation.

I joined the debate at my (Milo 20:48, 21 Nov) in response to jonny-mt (14:33, 21 Nov). I then began writing a new sub-section (#Notable spoiler verification as policy, Milo 23:42). You (Erik 17:59, 21 Nov) asked Nydas (17:25) a question which was on-topic to my new subsection, so I answered your question as a brief 4-line addendum during an edit conflict: "write off the style guideline that's been provided?" (e/c) As noted above it was a preemptive strike trial balloon and can be ignored. It also fails verification policy, as detailed below, and needs to be removed. Milo 23:42, 21 Nov 2007 " That's the total of my first-ever interaction with you, and you didn't reply.

Eight posts and two days later after I had responded to DGG (00:45, 23 Nov) and indirectly to Marc, you dropped out of the sky and laid a trash tone-civility charge on an astonished me. Erik (04:22, 23 Nov): "Your tone does not strike me as civil, Milo. ..."

There is no literal thing as an uncivil tone, since tone is a subjective quality and civil "...often suggests little more than the avoidance of overt rudeness" M-W.com civil. Beyond that minimum standard, my post was "adequate in courtesy and politeness", and despite your following misread of a premised question, I made no "statement". Premised questions are standard fare in questioning authority, precisely because they have considerable immunity from civility charges. That you did not recognize this, suggests that you are debating out of your league.

Marc took issue with the premise, but it's based on fully-evidenced quotations gathered over a six month debate, and I've stated it here frequently. I'm a careful researcher, and I check my drafts to prevent writing things I can't back up.

You followed up by offending me with escalated rhetoric presumptively attributing a war metaphor to my determinations. Instead of an apology, I got a quick distractive side step to (Erik 14:08) "...word choice in getting your perspective across strikes me as counterproductive." Yes, you're entitled to your opinion, but when offered in place of an apology to me, it opens cracks in your constant claims to AGF for yourself.

So far you've laid: "tone does not strike me as civil", "determining me to be the enemy", "counterproductive", "uncooperative", and "combative" at my door.

Let's look at WP:CIVIL-ICA(4) "Ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one kind or another". That's what you started at (Erik 04:22, 23 Nov), and what you have steadily escalated in (Erik 03:25) and (Erik 14:08). Of course, you keep telling me about your good intentions. Ok, AGF, your WP:ICA violations suggest that your demonstrated, commentable behavior has so far been that of a scale model loose cannon.

Finally, after all your claimed unintentional yet escalating provocations, started with your WP:ICA attack from the blue, you had the unmitigated nerve to rebuff my reasonable opinion that you need a wikivacation. I stand on my opinion as justified by the facts of record.

Do understand that I had made previous plans to comment at movie articles on Plot section citations where Pixelface has posted. I see that you have already posted there, so avoiding you is not an obvious option. If you have any more WP:ICAs about my style, choice of words, or kindred objections following defeat on principle at league debate, please keep them to yourself. Milo 23:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Removal of the Spoiler Template Does Not Indicate Banning Consensus

I thought I'd point out again, the removal of a template does not indicate consensus against things the template is used for. Most people voted to keep the template than voted to remove it, just as more people _added_ it to articles before the deletion was forced than removed it. Many of those who voted to delete it claimed to have done it _solely_ because it wasn't on many articles, and we all know why that was, and it wasn't consensus. So even some delete votes can't be considered consensus to remove spoiler warnings as a whole.

So, you still have to demonstrate consensus that spoiler warnings are not acceptible on WP. Not that conensus seems to matter to many of the people here. All that's been done thus far is (inappropriately) remove the template. Which means discussion of how in-text spoiler warnings can be done without the template is still on the table until otherwise is demonstrated. I suggest some text in the guideline along the lines of "it is possibile to use subsections in a plot category as extra spoiler warnings... for example, a plot might have subsections for Beginning, Middle, and End, or Setup, Rising Action, Climax" would therefore improve the guideline and therefore (somewhat) better reflect consensus. Pixelface's sourcing of spoiler warnings is also possible. Wandering Ghost (talk) 13:13, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I think there was a pretty broad consensus that if Wikipedia should have spoiler warnings at all, they should be templated. If you want to add non-templated warnings, you should demonstrate consensus for that. Kusma (talk) 13:18, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yes, mister "Following the rules wasn't getting us anywhere" himself. Thanks for your input, but you've already demonstrated bad faith with that quote over in the DRV. Consensus exists for some form of spoiler warning, due to the LACK of consensus for removing them. This lack of consensus has existed for months, and has not changed. As such, we once again are supposed to be working for compromise.Wandering Ghost (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There's a bit of muddled thinking going on here. I know there are some people who think the TfD and the DRV had the wrong outcome. That's a respectable viewpoint. But no sane person could believe that the editors who recommended deleting the template — the viewpoint that was ultimately ratified as community consensus — were at the same time endorsing the "home-brew" spoiler warning as its replacement. That would not be a coherent analysis of what occurred. Marc Shepherd (talk) 14:22, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The thinking is evolving, but clear enough. Your analysis is based on inadequate research.

The spoiler guide is disestablished by the spoiler template DRV. Therefore, no statement made in it at DRV time has any authority. Therefore, every spoiler option in text is available for any editor to use anywhere, right now.

That also means that the spoiler police have had their badges revoked. It's going to take a while to demonstrate to formerly oppressed notice-adding editors that the ex spoiler police are now just private editors, pushing their personal POVs by pointing at a revoked document. The descriptive phrase I would use for such POV pushing is 'false color of authority'.

The spoiler guide should now be tagged as historic, but I expect bitter-enders among the anti-spoiler clique will again revert feud to stall due process tagging.

Marc, you're being a newb again. Casual references to sanity acceptable in private conversations can too easily be taken as libels in public. Milo 18:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

See, I could make the same appeals to sanity. I could say 'we don't want spoiler warnings' is a respectable viewpoint. However, 'no sane person would suggest that it's a good idea to engage in or allow or endorse a series of bad faith compromises and abuses of process to achieve that end.' And yet, here we are, with many insane people on the anti-spoiler-warning side, who have done just that, yourself among them (you voted not to overturn the deletion, despite the fact that _more_ people were in favour of keep in the TfD, did you not? You saw the rampant spoiler deletion patrols, withought even so much as saying "this is wrong" did you not?).

Maybe some new sort of RfC would be appropriate to discuss Spoiler Warnings as a whole, since the policy is now completely unclear thanks to the template deletion. Until that happens, please demonstrate consensus that the deletion of the template means what you think it means. Wandering Ghost (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Much wishful thinking on the part of Milomedes and Wandering Ghost. --Tony Sidaway 19:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous...

You know, I just don't get it. It's say more...but what's the use? Seriously. You're all right, you're all wrong. Is there a point to arguing it all any more? The template is gone, no matter how it got there. At the moment, at least, WP can't have warnings beyond the disclaimer and the current fiction tag. I truly don't know the real consensus in the matter, but it's really gotten horridly petty, with thousands of useless words being spewed again and again. So..what have we accomplished, class? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:09, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

"Is there a point to arguing it all any more?" The point of arguing is to persuade the community that compromise below the level of core policies is in the best interests of the encyclopedia project. My originally-text spoiler notice was removed without bone fide consensus, no established authority currently exists to forbid text notices, unbadged POV pushers are suppressing other text noters daily, and I want my edit of a text spoiler notice back. I would compromise to have my edit back in a Hide'nShow form.

Why are you still here arguing? Milo 20:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

In which article did you place that spoiler notice, and when did you do so? Marc Shepherd (talk) 21:48, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The subject matter is famously distracting, and I don't want to derail Melodia's thread. Why don't you just answer her question? Milo 00:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't really have any comment on Melodia's post. What she wrote speaks for itself, and I took her questions to be rhetorical. But as you claim to be one of the aggrieved parties, I was curious what edit "you wanted to make, that the cabal/clique allegedly prevented you from making. If you don't want to derail Melodia's thread, feel free to start a new one. Marc Shepherd (talk) 02:29, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I started a couple months ago so I'm still just learning how all this works. I added some spoiler warnings by writing "(spoiler warning)" at the part of the story where the surprise was going to start, but somebody erased them and told me I had to use the template. Then I used the template and someone erased it right away and quoted WP:SPOILER. That happened on a few articles and seemed totally official so I gave up on spoiler warnings even though I didn't want to. After a while I found out there was conflict about it all along and I wasn't the only person to be upset about it and I saw the pages about deleting the template and wrote something there. I also saw that some of the people who told me not to use spoiler warnings have been writing on this page and the other ones about deleting the template.

Why do people want to spoil the stories for people who haven't read the books or seen the movies yet? The wikipedia politics about how the rules are made is confusing and I don't even know if I'm writing this in the right place. In case anybody cares about what new editors think is the right thing to do, I wanted to write something about this. People should know that there are other people who like to read about movies and books before they watch them or read them so they can enjoy them more and learn interesting things about them. It's disrespectful to give away the surprises without warning them first so they can skip that part. I don't see why we're not allowed to be courteus and put in a few words to tell the reader that a surprise is coming up so they might want to not read that part. --Linda (talk) 02:08, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

For my part, the trouble was that no one could define which works needed warnings, or how much a reader was willing to be told, before s/he would consider the story 'spoiled'. In my experience, the pre-May '07 usage had very little rhyme or reason. If an article lacked a spoiler tag, you couldn't tell if it was because it disclosed no surprises, or if the tag was just missing for some reason. Even where the tag was present, it often was mis-used, so that the amount of material "protected" was either too much, or too little. There were also cases where articles were getting re-arranged to put all the "spoilers" in one place, and some editors felt that the aim of putting information in "quarantine" was trumping the more important purpose of writing good articles.

There are, of course, counter-arguments to those points. But after lengthy debate, the result—which some people don't agree with, and will never agree with—is that Wikipedia is better off without spoiler warnings. And this resolution has at least one virtue. At most, a new reader will be "spoiled" only once, before s/he will realize that Wikipedia contains spoilers. Under the prior system, the amount of times it could happen was endless, since the spoiler template was used so inconsistently.

I came to this debate originally with the viewpoint that perhaps spoiler warnings could be intelligently employed with no harm to Wikipedia's larger mission. It was the inability, and indeed downright refusal, of those who most favored them to define what they wanted that finally persuaded me that it was hopeless. Marc Shepherd (talk) 02:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

When you say "But after lengthy debate, the result—which some people don't agree with, and will never agree with—is that Wikipedia is better off without spoiler warnings.", are you referring to the discussion to delete a template? 26 people argued to keep the template and 22 people argued to delete the template and that somehow means "Wikipedia is better off without spoiler warnings"? Also, you said "At most, a new reader will be "spoiled" only once, before s/he will realize that Wikipedia contains spoilers." Was that not also the case under the "prior system" when the spoiler template was used "inconsistently"? --Pixelface (talk) 23:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

What about the idea of spoiler warnings for recent fiction and murder mysteries?--Nydas^(Talk) 21:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining your feelings about this. I understand your idea that at least without any warnings people will know right away not to read the articles. But there are so many people writing articles and using different styles and organizing ideas in different ways, the articles will never all have one clean method as if it was done by a company with a boss and employees hired to write articles. Isn't that the whole point of wikipeida inviting everybody to write the articles?

I don't think it's fair to spoil the stories for people so I wanted to write something here in case anybody cared to find out about the opinions about other people writing the articles who didn't even know that it's possible for any of the rules to change. But after reading the pages of arguing, it looks pretty stressful so I don't think it's a good thing for me to try to change anyone's mind. But just to let people know, there are people who want to be able to warn readers so the surprises don't get wrecked, and it feels bad to write about stories with surprises in them and not be allowed to do that. I'm not worried about the articles getting messed up by that, because people will find ways to make good articles anyway, even if they are allowed to warn about spoilers. Thanks again for replying to my note. --Linda (talk) 09:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

To clarify one point, the result of the debate was _not_ that Wikipedia was better off without spoiler warnings. There was no result to the _debate_, because Wikipedia is actually quite divided on the issue at the base level. What should have happened with regards to that, in a sane world with rational people, is that a compromise would have been reached. That 'Wikipedia is better off without spoilers' is the decision of a few crusaders who felt personally offended at spoiler warnings and went around removing the page from every attempt to add one, and resisted any of the valid proposals to compromise (indeed, removed spoiler warnings in violation of the compromises that were reached), and then used the subsequent lack of spoilers on pages and the lack of any compromise to try and force through the decision that wikipedia should be without spoilers. This abuse of Wikipedia's principles to push a particular point of view is way more important than the spoiler question (even though the lack of warnings will lead to less information being added), because it could happen at any time, on any number of issues, and it's very shameful that people are supporting it just because it's happening in favour of their preferred point of view. I only hope that the next time it happens, it happens against them, to perhaps open their eyes. There's still time for them to change their minds on their own, but I've given up hope for most of them. Wandering Ghost (talk) 13:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

One must separate distaste for the result, from acknowledgment that it has happened. Plenty of people think that Al Gore really "won" the 2000 U.S. presidential election, and that only a few unscrupulous crusaders (that is, conservative Supreme Court Justices) kept him from being president. But we have only one system for resolving such disputes, and under that system Bush won. Even those who resent the outcome can recognize that it was the outcome.

Likewise, the result of the spoiler debate is that Wikipedia is better off without spoiler warnings. Those who recommended deleting the template were clearly not suggesting that spoiler warnings should continue to be employed in some other way (other than via {{current fiction}}). Even those who strenuously believe that the TfD was wrongly closed, ought to be able to see what the closure meant. It may have been the "wrong" outcome in some abstract sense, but just like presidential elections, Wikipedia isn't perfect, and sometimes we arrive at a result that does not please everybody. Marc Shepherd (talk) 13:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

So you're advocating that Wikepedia should ignore all evidence it's doing something wrong ,embark on a course of action that will damage it's reputation and take years to recover lost ground .Interesting Garda40 (talk) 15:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You said "the result of the spoiler debate is that Wikipedia is better off without spoiler warnings" but the closing admin of the TFD said the {{current fiction}} tag, a spoiler warning with an expiration date, had consensus. Care to change your statement? --Pixelface (talk) 23:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

See false dichotomy. Marc Shepherd (talk) 16:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

See Joke especially when you leave such a rich target .Garda40 (talk) 16:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, seriously, none of your purported facts have been even remotely demonstrated. The evidence doesn't all point in one direction, Wikipedia's future reputation is a mere prediction unburdened by facts, and there has been no "lost ground" that will take any amount of time to recover. Marc Shepherd (talk) 16:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I haven't given out any facts .I'm surprised I have to explain this but you mentioned the election of Al Gore and then mentioned in the next paragraph this It may have been the "wrong" outcome in some abstract sense, but just like presidential elections, Wikipedia isn't perfect, and sometimes we arrive at a result that does not please everybody..

See how I made a joke link between the election of Bush ( "wrong" result ) and his actions in office and the "wrong" result with the spoiler templete deletion and what may follow from that .Garda40 (talk) 17:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Some might say the loss of the warnings would cause it to have a bad reputation. Others might say it might help show that WP is dedicated toward being more serious than fansites and forums. Which way that'll roll, I do not know. Unless you're referring to the process itself, in which case probably not enough people will look at the nitty gritty to matter. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:08, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I want to respond to Marc in the same sense as Garda40 has. In democracy, if majority wins, then the minority should accept the result (unless it's oppression of the minority). But what you advocate is even if the majority is against something, which is implemented by minority anyway, the majority should just shut up and live with that. This is quite elitist position, and can quickly lead to destruction of democracy (before you give me "Wikipedia is not democracy" mantra - it factually is, as any society where decision making is consensual is democracy, because consensual means everyone agrees, therefore majority agrees; moreover, the original statement includes ".. not experiment in ..", which changes the meaning - it may well be democracy, but to study how well it works as democracy is not the purpose of the project). If there are more and more things that majority disagrees with (maybe a different majority each time), the majority will leave. Now, you probably disagree that majority wanted SWs - my answer is we don't know that, because nobody put that to the *real* test ever (I mean real voting where the rules are determined and fair). There are only clues - for example, the TfD of SW ended with slight majority for keep. If I would see that majority doesn't want SWs (for whatever reason - both sides have sounds reasons), I wouldn't have any problem. This is the biggest threat to Wikipedia IMHO - lack of democracy and respect for majority opinion (especially, somehow failing to notify public at large when something is being deleted), which will detract contributors in the long term. Samohyl Jan (talk) 18:10, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

"There are only clues - for example, the TfD of SW ended with ..." In the interests of historical accuracy, note that the count by Pixelface (13:12/13, 26 Nov timestamp bug?) is "In the TFD, 22 people argued to keep and 22 people argued to delete." You may be referring to my (Milo's) earlier count at the DRV that I declared a "quick, possibly inexact count" at "26 to 24", but "that close a vote flags a possible no-consensus result". (I quickly searched for, and hand tallied the words "keep" and "delete", in the first twenty-some characters of each line of the voting section of the Nov 8, 2007 TFD, then added one to each that I had commented on as unusual.) Milo 20:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Milo, the timestamp of my comment on this page appears as 13:12 on this page, but in the edit history it appears as 13:13. I can only guess that a few seconds after I clicked Save page, the edit history recorded the time. Maybe there's a slight lag. I guess it's a bug. I've never encountered it before. And my statement that 22 people argued to keep and 22 people argued to delete was incorrect. I think the number of people that argued to keep is actually 26 and the number of people that argued to delete is 22 (if you include the nomination and exclude Cryptic's comment). I think the deletion of the template ironically benefits editors who favor spoiler warnings. I've left a comment in the TFD section about it. --Pixelface (talk) 02:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

If you mean that it's now harder to go on spoiler patrol, I'm afraid there's no joy. Tony Sidaway runs a bot that searches for "unexpected" uses of the word "spoiler," so the patrol remains alive and well (see User:Tony Sidaway/searches/spoiler). My informal observation is that home-brew spoiler warnings are not that prevalent, with only a very small number of them showing up every day. You can check the history of that page, and see for yourself. There's no evidence for the supposed vast legions of editors who want to add spoiler warnings, but are being prevented from doing so. Marc Shepherd (talk) 03:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'm well aware of TonyBot and its list. I believe MiszaBot also has a list. But now, the "spoiler patrol" has zero credibility because this guideline says nothing about homemade spoiler warnings. You say "There's no evidence for the supposed vast legions of editors who want to add spoiler warnings" but that's because you keep burying the evidence. No more spoiler template = no more spoiler patrol. Editors will continue to use spoiler warnings. What will be your excuse for removing them now? POV? With the template gone, editors can now word spoiler warnings however they want, and if they want to avoid detection by TonyBot, they just have to omit the word "spoiler" from their notice. --Pixelface (talk) 17:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

If nothing else, they potentially violate WP:SELF. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:25, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

The credibility of the spoiler patrol, needless to say, is this very guideline, which says that Wikipedia does not use spoiler warnings. The spoiler patrol had pretty good success even with the previous wimpy guideline, which said that warnings may be appropriate in certain circumstances, without mandating them in any particular case. The current version is far more clear-cut.

If an editor finds a back-door way to temporarily "avoid detection," eventually they are found out, and it usually happens pretty quickly. Fortunately, in my experience, the vast majority of editors operate in good faith. Marc Shepherd (talk) 17:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

No, the guideline changed. It says nothing about homemade spoiler warnings. The tag removers had their chance to edit it and didn't bother to mention them. The guideline currently says "Wikipedia carries no spoiler warnings except for the Content disclaimer" but that's obviously false. If Wikipedia carried no spoiler warnings, editors would not be removing them. This is a guideline. It's not set in stone. And the current guideline does not endorse any sort of spoiler patrol. I suppose "success" is easy when 2 editors edit 45,000 articles with a tool only meant for non-controversial edits. Editors should not have to find a "back-door" to avoid detection by a small group of editors pushing their POV across every article. This guideline does not forbid spoiler warnings. If the spoiler patrol has demonstrated anything, good faith is not it. --Pixelface (talk) 21:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

This guideline does indeed forbid spoiler warnings, to the extent a guideline can "forbid" anything. What about Wikipedia carries no spoiler warnings don't you understand?

Obviously, like every single one of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it is violated constantly—though far less often than most. (Compare, for instance, the number of spoiler warnings added to the number of invalid images uploaded.) That's what happens when you have a website that anyone can edit. You get a large number of low-value or negative-value edits, which someone then has to go and clean up.

Many Wikipedia policies and guidelines are enforced by some kind of "patrol". Indeed, if there is a way to search for something in an automated way, rest assured that somebody is searching for it. Whether you happen to like this particular guideline, "patrolling" is the only way to maintain some semblance of quality, when the site is this large, and anyone is allowed to edit. Marc Shepherd (talk) 22:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

My argument is really more pragmatic than philosophical. There is much about Wikipedia that I think is highly flawed, and that I would change if they put me in charge. But on a personal level, I've made a decision to work within the system, which means accepting project-wide decisions with which I disagree, of which there are many.

Clearly, no one else is obligated to make the same trade-off that I have made. But I am not sure what is accomplished by the same handful of people making the same handful of arguments on this project page. There are thousands of Wikipedians, and most of them quite obviously don't feel strongly enough about spoiler warnings to make a contribution here. Some of the meta-arguments you're making aren't about SW's per se, and whatever their merits, probably would get a wider audience in another forum.

Whatever the vote count of the TfD may have been, clearly the number participating was miniscule compared to the number of Wikipedians. If the "lack of democracy and respect for majority opinion" are eventually going to be this site's downfall, I think it'll have to be on an issue that has much more traction than this one did. Marc Shepherd (talk) 00:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

"I've made a decision to work within the system" {spit-take} That's funny – for months you've been supporting what I understand as anarchist revolutionary theory. Milo 05:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I have seen similar problems at Wikiproject Mathematics recently - deletion of Category:Erdos numbers and of Template:Proof. The decision was by no means fair - they didn't really inform the people on the project. This concerns several orders less people than SWs - on the original RfC about SWs were hundreds of people - but it still pissed them off. I don't think there will be a single large event if Wikipedia starts failing - it will be small events like this that will drive people off. People will know why is it happening, but most administrators will not accept it.

About the debate here - I feel that when I made a really interesting argument (and not always the same), I got no response from Tony or David or Phil, or they repeated "it's unencyclopedic" or "we don't want that", so I don't feel like that debate has actually taken place. I will give you examples if you want. Samohyl Jan (talk) 06:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You've made a decision to 'work within the system'. That could be noble if it were a decision to 'work within the system in order to try and change it'. However, in order to do that, you'd have to stand up when there are problems, which I've never actually seen you do. Perhaps you have on other issues, but hey, I'm not going to follow you around to other debates, so I'm just going to go on what I see. And what I see is someone who seems to, on most occasions, sound reasonable, but is never, when called upon, actually moved to act in such a way. You talk compromise and the need for bright line policy where spoilers are required but refuse to support them when proposed. When a TfD is closed clearly improperly you vote to not overturn the decision. So I can only assume your decision is "work within the system and shrug and say oh well to any problems". I hope I am wrong on that, because I consider that cowardice. You know, the whole "all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"/"Do not fear your enemies, the worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent." type thing. You've given your silent (and occasionally not-so-silent) consent to the problems of Wikipedia, to the people who use dirty tricks to fake consensus for an issue. Wandering Ghost (talk) 12:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

This isn't exactly a Storming of the Bastille situation. Remarkably few people actually give a damn about spoiler warnings. As I noted above, the number of contributors to the TfD and the DRV discussions was miniscule, compared to the number of Wikipedians. One's level of indignation needs to be proportionate to the magnitude of the problem, and in this case the magnitude barely makes a ripple.

My position was always that spoiler warnings weren't going to help Wikipedia, but if done right, wouldn't harm it either. As you've noted, I believed that a bright-line standard was needed, which would not only keep out misplaced spoiler warnings, but would also prevent the removal of those that truly belonged. Ultimately, those who felt most passionately about the issue weren't able to articulate what the standard should be; most did not even try, even when strongly encouraged to do so. (To your credit, Ghost, I believe you were one of the few who did attempt to work up some examples, although it was on a sandbox page that you never formally offered to the community for discussion and refinement.)Marc Shepherd (talk) 15:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You said "Remarkably few people actually give a damn about spoiler warnings." If you're talking about the "spoiler patrol", yes their numbers are probably remarkably few compared to the registered users of this site. You said "the number of contributors to the TfD and the DRV discussions was miniscule, compared to the number of Wikipedians." Do you think the number of transclusions of the spoiler template had anything to do with the number of contributors to the TFD and DRV? Do you think 45,000 transclusions would have attracted more contributors? In May, there was no consensus to delete the template. In November, the {{spoiler}} template never appeared in more than 11 articles throughout the TFD, yet 26 people argued to keep and 22 people argued to delete. Any chance the template had of being put to another community-wide discussion was subverted by the efforts of David Gerard, Tony Sidaway, you, and other members of the "spoiler patrol." Don't remove a template from every article and then complain that nobody showed up at the TFD. Or was that the plan all along? --Pixelface (talk) 21:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, we know for sure that there were 45,000 spoiler tags, and there was no "storming of the barricades" after they disappeared. Given the viral nature of Internet discourse, if there were huge numbers of people who were offended by this, I would have expected them to do something. Instead, we've got this moribud talk page with the same 10 highly indignant people arguing about the grave injustice that was allegedly done, and the other 10,000,000 users getting on with their lives. I would infer that the other 10,000,000 are either satisfied with what was done, or they aren't dissatisfied enough to make it their personal crusade. Only about 10 people have done that. Marc Shepherd (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

"there was no "storming of the barricades" after they disappeared" Duh. Almost no one knew then because the clique abusively suppressed May 2007 spoiler-related process announcements, as I documented at the Nov 8 TFD. I think most editors still don't know about it. Here's actual testimony of the result: "I actually do remember when all across Wikipedia all of a sudden all the spoiler tags were gone for films and such, but I had no idea until now how or why it had happened." (N.S. 14:48, 7 September 2007 [93]). Had they known, I estimate 675-some annoyed editors might have shown up. The clique knew perfectly well that a properly promoted spoiler process would overwhelm them, so they muddled through what was in effect a semi-secret coup. Did they send plot emails to each other? It wouldn't be necessary. Anyone with their experience at manipulating naive Wikipedians would instinctively try to suppress process announcement publicity.

"the grave injustice that was allegedly done" I think you still don't get it. The grave injustice was the abuse of due process, for the wiki-wide reasons described here: Wikipedia:Process is important Milo 04:00, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

There should be some common sense applied

Despite the spoiler-friendly atmosphere that has now been engendered here, I think this style guideline should be expanded to discuss common-sense approaches to using spoilers. For example (and I hope this spoils some surprises for people), it has been announced that Billie Piper is returning as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who. I just edited the article on Rose Tyler to remove this spoiler from the lead and put it farther down the article. Imagine, for example, if Soylent Green was a current movie and someone wrote in the lead "Soylent Green is a science fiction film in which it's revealed that the human race is being turned into food". It doesn't matter if spoilers are to be given in the clear or not, some common sense needs to be applied. Am I making sense? Basically what I'm asking for is some expansion of the guideline to the effect that "Yes, spoilers are OK, but here's some ways to incorporate them without having a negative effect on the reader." I also think the content disclaimer banner should be on every page as well for those who don't think of looking in places like this (it can always include a button allowing users to minimize it a la templates and infoboxes once they get the picture). 23skidoo (talk) 14:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You do realise that Billie Piper's return to the role of Rose Tyler has been announced by BBC News in its entertainment section? We shouldn't be mangling articles so as to conceal real life facts such as casting announcements that make headline news. On the other hand, the announcement was misplaced in the lead of Rose Tyler. --Tony Sidaway 15:31, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You keep saying that, as though the entire article would be rendered unreadable by a different arrangement of sentences. "Mangling" indeed. Kuronue | Talk 21:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)