Talk:The Book of the Short Sun

message: Since it is possible to synopsize a book without spoiling it, it is not redundant to offer a spoiler tag in a synopsis section. I thought from the edit summary that the tag-removing edit was "official" in some sense, or indeed a simple tidying up of a redundant bracket somewhere, but now that I know it was one of thousands of similar wholesale edits I'm reasserting its importance. I'd also argue that people familiar with the books are the ones best suited to making those sorts of determinations, and that the WP:SPOILER guideline clearly lacks consensus at this time. --Jere7my 07:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but Wikipedia is not a repository for plot summaries. Multiple synopses are unnecessary for encyclopedic coverage. These sorts of warnings detract from the professional quality of the encyclopedia, and shouldn't be used unless there is a strong reason for a user to not expect spoilers. People understand that reading a plot synopsis might spoil the material, even if its possible to write a synopsis that doesn't. --Eyrian 07:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This debate is not going to be settled here. Please leave the spoiler tags be until WP:SPOILER actually achieves consensus. --Jere7my 07:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I say remove them until the debate reaches consensus. Again, it's pretty obvious to me, speaking only in this single case, that putting a spoiler warning in a synopsis section is pretty unnecessary. --Eyrian 07:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't it make more sense to return the article to the state it was in before the tag-purging began? At the end of the day, I may agree with the removal or relocation of the spoiler tag here, but since the nub of the debate is whether the tag purge was a good idea I'd just as soon return the article to its pre-debate state until consensus on a policy is reached. --Jere7my 07:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, since this "book" actually consists of three separate novels, it may not be clear what the synopsis section covers; I think a spoiler tag is more appropriate here than in a single novel's SYNOPSIS section. --Jere7my 07:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've now divided the section up, so that readers needn't worry about spoiling further than they'd like. Still, the spoiler tag in this instance remains unnecessary. --Eyrian 07:37, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text:  I think that's sensible. Obviously the good of the article can be considered irrespective of debate elsewhere.  Asking for us to hold off editing because a decision hasn't been made on some page somewhere else isn't really how we do things on Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway 10:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have either of you read these books?  If not, I submit that you do not have the necessary knowledge to make a decision about spoiler tags.  I further submit that Tony Sidaway, at least, has an anti-spoiler tag agenda that goes beyond what is good for any particular article.  Finally "how we do things on Wikipedia" is dismissive.  Obviously, it's how some of "us" do things on Wikipedia. --Jere7my 16:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I kicked out after Citadel. But how is knowing the plot relevant here? It is a matter of whether someone expects the plot to be spoiled from a synopsis/plot summary section, which is generally a universal criterion. --Eyrian 23:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You should really read Long Sun and Short Sun; they're both excellent. Anyway, as I said above, I might eventually be persuaded that a spoiler tag on an entire synopsis is indeed redundant; that seems like one of the good parts of WP:SPOILER. Spoiler tags might be better reserved for a portion of a summary, like "SPOILER Then it turns out Bruce Willis has been dead all along. /SPOILER" But I think it's a violation of Wikipedia etiquette for a small group of editors to make wholesale changes to thousands of articles they're not personally familiar with, and I think spoiler tags should be left as they were before the purge until WP:SPOILER achieves a real consensus.  As it now stands, the spoiler patrol deleted 45,000 spoiler tags without having to justify themselves; expecting every reinstatement of a spoiler tag to rigorously justify itself seems like quite an imbalance. --Jere7my 23:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, I can understand how people might be upset after a nightweek of the long knives for spoiler tags, but I haven't really been a part of that. I doubt I've removed more than a 5-10, and most of that is re-removal. I tend to agree with your view of the policy; it didn't seem to me that an entire section should be tagged. --Eyrian 23:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. Thanks for the explanation, and apologies for lumping you in with the shadowy cabal. :) --Jere7my 00:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spoiler tag 

message: One of the inhumi (Jahlee) has an explanation of the inhumi flinging themselves into space to make the crossing from Green to Blue, on page 60 of Return to the Whorl: "If you're not strong enough, not a strong enough flier, you fall back to Green a failure. If you lack endurance... Only your frozen corpse gets to Blue. It crosses the sky there, a little scratch of fire." Since Horn knows about the landers at that point in the narrative, she'd have no reason to lie. I removed the long explanation of an unreliable narrator; we get it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak (though the editor was correct that they do also use landers, when they can get them). --Jere7my (talk) 07:00, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You have it backwards. The fact that Horn knew from experience what the traveling truth was, is her exact reason to try to seed him with disinformation. If humans know the truth about how the inhumu travel between worlds, they will know how to stop them (disable all landers). So Jahlee is motivated to spin this tale and support the idea that inhumu can fly between worlds (unstoppable, so please, disregard this lander over here disabling it or attacking the people at Pajaroku and taking their lander is immaterial, right?). Furthermore, Jahlee is shown in the novels as an inhuma that Silk/Horn manipulates entirely because her motivation is to keep the inhumu's secrets, secret. Her agenda then is just that: she works to protect the secrets from getting out, she always does that. She stays with Silk/Horn possibly to find out who he has told, and who they have to kill. She is the opposite from the Horse's Mouth on this travel issue. Furthermore, she at the end of the novels has possibly seduced Hide on the Red Sun Whorl, and attempts to kill Silk/Horn's wife Nettle which confirms that she was working from her own agenda all along. When she finally dies, even though she cannot kill Nettle, she spits out the most important secret to her. This is a death sentence, which is the reason why Silk/Horn has never told anyone at all, aside from his promise. In the end, Nettle leaves the Short Sun Whorl even though the spirit of Horn has collapsed inside of Silk. No reason is given, but we know that Silk cares about everyone and knows this information is a death sentence, so possibly has encouraged her to leave so that she is not a target of further inhumu attacks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.12.220.29 (talk) 23:33, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flying from Green to Blue 

message: Maybe someone can find value in some of this, but it amounts to an essay on the books, and only someone who had already read the books could make sense of it.  · rodii · 22:46, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section moved from main article 

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