Wikipedia talk:Spoiler/Archive 13

message: :"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)
replies: text:  It's dead, Jim. --Tony Sidaway 17:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "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)
thread_title:  Notable spoiler verification as policy 

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

text: 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)

text: 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)

text: * For the record: the confusion was caused by Milomedes' describing the "disclaimers" guideline as "legal disclaimers". As Tony Sidaway points out, the disclaimers guideline refers to disclaimers of all sorts not just legal disclaimers. --Lquilter 14:52, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to merge this guideline back to [[WP:NDT]] 

message: I'll note that mw:Extension:Gadgets has been enabled on Wikipedia. This could easily provide a means of controlling the display of spoiler tags, by providing a means of running Javascript code that shows or hides spoilers or spoiler warnings. Of course, there are still social problems that would need to be solved: Are spoiler warnings a service we want to provide to users? If so, how do we define what should be spoiler-tagged, and how do we ensure that spoiler warnings are used consistently? — PyTom (talk) 05:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since the no-consensus spoiler philosophy debate will bloat the technical question thread, I've copied the technical question into a new section #Gadgets: technical display of spoiler tags. Milo 21:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gadgets: social problems 

message: (Copied from #Gadgets: social problems)
"I'll note that mw:Extension:Gadgets has been enabled on Wikipedia. This could easily provide a means of controlling the display of spoiler tags, by providing a means of running Javascript code that shows or hides spoilers or spoiler warnings. .... Pytom 05:57, 5 Dec 2007"
:If workable, this could be a tool for implementing Hide'nShow mark-II (html/js button switch). Mark-II would have a spoiler-notice tag switch somewhere near the top of a page, something like  | tags |. This button would activate gadget or other code, which would in turn show the .css-hidden spoiler notices on the button's page. 
:If you have code samples of how a button can activate some gadget, it would be nice to see it posted here. Interfacing that button-gadget sample to the mark-I (personal .css scripting) text-showing code is a separate programming problem. 
:With a mark-II unhiding button available 'per page', mark-I unhiding preferences should continue to work 'per class' for every .css class of spoiler notice (All, Wrestling, Books, Movies, etc.), selected and enabled by copy-paste to personal monobook.css or common.css pages. 
:If/when mark-III (recoding MediaWiki) is ever developed, a  | tags | tab should appear embedded in the top menu. Clicking this tab would reveal a menu of available actions that could: (1) show the hidden tags as the mark-II button would do; (2) optionally write the mark-I preferences to a user's monobook.css or common.css pages. Mark-III should also make simple wikitext code available to deprecate the custom button-.css-gadget code, though the mark-I and mark-II methods should continue to work under the application shell principle of good software. Milo 21:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gadgets: technical display of spoiler tags 

message: I was asked to look into this dispute and perhaps provide some fresh insight into resolving it. It would seem that much of the talk here has been going in circles lately, which needless to say isn't particularly productive. Thus I offer the following points:
*Primarily, the accusations of improper conduct must stop, and immediately. This is because (a) they are extraordinarily unhelpful in resolving anything; (b) just because someone didn't use the "proper method" to arrive at some conclusion, does not mean that said conclusion is therefore invalid; and (c) Wikipedia really does not have stringent rules that must be followed all the time; indeed, the only rule that has been seriously breached here, and by both "sides", is that of civility. I offer this page as explanation of the foundation of Wikipedia process, and how there really isn't much to "breach" in there.
*Aside from that, everybody should realize that they speak for themselves. Alluding to a multitude of hypothetical editors that would "obviously" agree to whatever point one happens to be making is an exercise in futile rhetoric, not in dispute resolution.
*Secondarily, it is obvious that there exists a technical method of creating spoiler warnings. Barring new developer inventions, that method obviously involves templates, because spreading one message over various pages is precisely what templates are for. Attempting to type a message manually because one feels "the templates are not allowed" is only fighting symptoms, and as such really doesn't help until the underlying issue is resolved.
*Most importantly, and tying in to the above, I see a lot of discussion on how spoiler warnings could be given, but that's really not important, because we know it is possible. The important question here is when spoiler warnings should be given. Now the answer of "whenever editors feel like it" is, at this point, no longer acceptable - we've tried that, and it didn't work out or we wouldn't be here. That is hardly surprising; we have a vast number of style guidelines because e.g. article layout also isn't done "however people feel like it", but has become (mostly) standardized at some point in our past.
*So I believe that the way ahead would be for those in favor of spoiler warnings to provide a clear and concise definition of when such warnings are appropriate, without resorting to such vagaries as "whenever people might become upset at reading something". If such a definition can be consensually agreed upon, the technical part becomes trivial. It would seem that "recently released films" would be a good place to start.
*>Radiant< 23:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "The important question here is when spoiler warnings should be given." Do you have an idea of how many guidelines tell editors where to place tags? --Pixelface (talk) 03:17, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think I understand you Radiant!. You said "Wikipedia really does not have stringent rules" and then you said "the way ahead would be for those in favor of spoiler warnings to provide a clear and concise definition of when such warnings are appropriate" and "If such a definition can be consensually agreed upon, the technical part becomes trivial." Are you suggesting there's a proper method for placing spoiler warnings? I can say when I think warnings are appropriate, but you said Wikipedia does not really have stringent rules that must be followed all the time. If Wikipedia does not really have stringent rules that must be followed all the time, why is the answer "whenever editors feel like it" unacceptable? Telling people when it's appropriate to place warnings and where they should go sounds like a rule to me. Do other tags have strict rules on placement? --Pixelface (talk) 03:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For the most part, we don't have "strict rules" on Wikipedia. That said, we do have innumerable guidelines, of which this is one. I think (and he may correct me if I'm misinterpreting) that he was describing the way forward in discussing what the text of this guideline should be, and how to move forward to attain consensus. As an aside, I'm staying neutral to this discussion atm. This is just a friendly attempt at clarification : ) - jc37 05:09, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Radiant, I don't think that discussion is going in circles (although, interestingly, whenever I have really good argument, it gets archived without answer, which happened just now with my last answer to Marc). There is a proposal to implement showable SWs (hidden by default). If that is implemented without any additional guidance, then only people who want to see SWs would decide if they are appropriate, and others shouldn't care. Therefore, this would be clearly different group of people than decided if SWs are appropriate before, and thus previous experience cannot be applied. Samohyl Jan (talk) 06:01, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ahem