UESPWiki:Archive/CP No Spoiler Warnings

No Spoiler Warnings
It has been proposed that we just get rid of spoiler warnings altogether, but leave some sort of message on the :Main Page and quite possibly the main gamespace pages. The argument behind this is that the entire site is like one big spoiler, so hiding everything that may potentially reveal plot twists or ending details seems silly. Spoiler warnings are bulky, and not mentioning the information altogether is censorship. What does everyone think about this? --Aristeo | Talk 23:21, 1 November 2006 (EST)

:I've been slowly gravitating towards this point of view myself.  It does seem kind of foolish to be hinting at the facts instead of just providing them when the whole purpose of the site is to provide information.  Why force a reader to have to go to extra work to find out the information that they came to the site to find out?  And I know that for myself when I want to play a game without being spoiled, I choose to not visit any web sites; when I start browsing the web for information, I do it knowing and accepting that I could end up finding out more information than I was really looking for.  So why should we treat our readers any differently?  --Nephele 23:31, 1 November 2006 (EST)

::I think we're both hinting that this is a content over style issue. The styles are the potential ways to announce a spoiler, and the content is the spoiler itself. The only way that truly frees the content is to not have any spoiler warnings, text hiding, or censoring of any spoilers. I doubt this will be a deciding factor, but I had to address that anyway. --Aristeo | Talk 12:21, 2 November 2006 (EST)

:::So does anyone else have any other thoughts on the subject? We discussed the issue in :IRC, so there may be some more opinions on this matter. Or perhaps everyone's thoughts have already been addressed by Nephele and me? --Aristeo | Talk 12:21, 2 November 2006 (EST)

::::I think that the spoilers are a part of Oblivion. It's essentially agreed that they belong on Quest pages, since these are essentialy what is protected. I think that we mind as well just open them up, no warnings except on the Main Page and Section Main Pages, and simply say: this is a walkthrough and information database. What do people come here for besides spoilers and helpful hints? --Dylnuge 22:55, 16 November 2006 (EST)

:::::I've performed some research into this, and conclude that fully &frac12; of all the players would prefer spoilers be confined to specific areas.  The remaining have are about evenly split to the degree that &frac14; have no opinion, and the other &frac14; would prefer solutions/spoilers be interleaved in the main content.  The reasons and psychology are not w/o precedent and are fairly easy to grok no matter which side of the fence you sit.  

:::::I really think spoilers should be confined to specific areas (such as quest pages, or item pages), rather than interleaved through-out the content.  At first I tried to enumerate all the reasons for this, and include my research into this matter by looking at several other game sites which asked this very question, but then I realized no one here is very interested in reading a 150 page magnus opus.  An opinion was requested, and here it is: confine spoilers to specific areas.   


::::::I'm not a regular editor, but I am a regular user of the UESP so I suppose I have good grounds for an argument. 
::::::To me, the UESP is a source of detailed knowledge of all the games in of Elderscrolls and the content helped me greatly to work out things about the older games. For the functionality the UESP should contain the largest amount of information possible, this would include spoilers. 

::::::However in two to three years, Oblivion will be old and most of the storyline discovered and along with that allot of editors will have moved on to something new. 
::::::At this point, the Wiki will become somewhat static and any information that isn't known, will most likely never be known. It's therefor important that the style of the articles written *in the present* should never withhold any information.
::::::86.80.122.213 19:37, 21 January 2007 (EST) Proweler