Spoilers and spoiler policies

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Nevermore
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Spoilers and spoiler policies

Post by Nevermore »

Hey guys,

over the course of the past few months, I've discovered that various sites and message boards have very... interesting spoiler policies, to say the least.

Recently, someone on another board asked not to post any potential "spoilers" about the Watchmen movie, namely events from the comic book which has been in publication for over 20 years by this point. This makes for an interesting example.

To sum it up, the following spoiler policies exist:

1) No spoiler warnings ever. News, set reports, story leaks etc. about upcoming movies, TV shows, comic books etc. are blatantly spilled out and discussed in the open. Anyone who enters a thread or accesses a website and learns about pre-release information they didn't want to know about is at fault for clicking the thread or reading the site in the first place. An understandable mindset, but not particularly respectful with regards to other users.

2) Any information coming from official sources (trailers, interviews with the producers, third party licensees etc.) is no longer a spoiler. Kind of an "on the fence" thing: If the producers want their audience to know stuff, does it make sense for the audience to create their own rules? Is someone who wants to learn information strictly from the officially published work itself ignorant? Are people who follow official pre-release information tools?

3) Once the episode has aired on TV, the movie is officially in theaters, the comic or book is out in stores etc., the whole plot is open for discussion with no spoiler warnings necessary. Regardless of the specifics, this is a pretty reasonable rule.

4) A "one week"/"one month" limit following the official "release" as per 3), to allow for people who haven't been able to watch the episode on its premiere date, buy the book on its first day of release etc. to catch up. Likewise, for people in other countries who may not get the movie, comic etc. until a week or two later. Still a reasonable rule and mostly a courtesy thing.

4a) Specifically for websites with a target audience in a country that's not the movie/TV show/book/comic's origin country: Once the story has been officially released anywhere, it stops being a spoiler, regardless of whether it has already been released domestically or not.

4b) Still a spoiler until the work has been officially released domestically.

4c) "One week"/"one month" limit following the official domestic release.

5a) Plot points are free for discussion as per 3) or 4), but limited to discussions specifically about the original medium. Adaptations are exempt from this rule. So even if you've been reading the X-Men comics for several decades, Wolverine's healing factor would have still been a spoiler in discussions about the then-upcoming movie until the movie was released to theaters. This mostly affects adaptations from "minor" to "major" media (usually movies or TV shows). Reasonability questionable.

5b) Plot points are free for discussion as per 3) or 4), but limited to discussions specifically about the work itself. For example, it's okay to discuss episodes of Lost in a thread about Lost, but any specific plot twists must be marked as spoilers in a thread about Heroes and vice versa.

6) Any major plot points are to be considered spoilers and marked accordingly for all eternity because there will always be new audiences growing up that may not have watched the Star Wars movies yet and might not know yet that Darth Vader is Luke's father, and would therefore spoil their first viewing of the movies. Likewise, plot twists from season 1 of Lost are still considered spoilers in discussions about season 5, because someone who hasn't watched season 1 yet might accidentally stumble into a season 5 discussion. Reasonabilty highly questionable. The biggest problem is the scope of such a spoiler policy - does it affect all works? How about the ending of Citizen Kane? Grimm's Fairy Tales? The ending of Romeo and Juliet? Historic facts such as the Titanic sinking?

If you were in charge of a website, which spoiler policy would YOU enforce?
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Post by inflatable dalek »

I think it’s fair enough not to blow spoiler about a book in a thread about the film version however old it is. Same if there’s a specific thread started by someone to talk about a old show/film/book they’re experiencing for the first time. More generally, once something’s been released then I think spoilers become redundant in the relevant threads. If someone’s daft enough to look in the [random example] Quantum of Solace thread before they’ve seen it that’s there own look out if they find out who dies in it.
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Nevermore
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Post by Nevermore »

I've heard about people who go into specific "spoiler" sub-forums for TV shows and then complain about the spoilers there.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

I weigh up how likely any readers are to have heard or seen of the ending... I'm currently working on a full Ideon guide for my site, and spoiler-wise it's a tricky one - anyone who's heard of the show has probably done so because of the ending... Older stuff I think depends on its' fame and how much details matter - for example, if anyone gets as far as reading or watching Romeo and Juliet without knowing the ending, I'd be shocked... For the latter, there's the example of Doctor Who, where various shocks at the time of broadcast are basically meaningless out of context (e.g. the end of Earthshock is meaningless if you haven't gone seven years without seeing a Cyberman, even if you haven't got a DVD cover with pictures of the buggers on).

Shock twists are generally (very generally) a recent thing, especially your Usual Suspects/Lost type things which largely rely on them... I've never particularly seen the point in people looking at spoilers for that type of thing - they're so driven by twists that if you know what's ahead surely there's no point in actually watching.

For anything current and/or forthcoming, I think spoilers shoudl be heavily signposted - it's only fair to give people half a chance to see what's going on for themselves before some dickhead splashes it all over the place.
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Post by RID Scourge »

I usually don't mind spoilers, but I'm not like those folks who posted "Snape kills Dumbledore" the day that Halfblood Prince came out. I'd say that a month is safe in that if you haven't seen it in a month then you're not worried about the movie being spoiled for you.

Watchmen's kind of hard. All in all I'd say very few folks are going to have heard of it outside of comic circles and the internet. I'd probably tag it in someplace like general discussions, but I wouldn't do so in comics.
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Post by Denyer »

Not posting spoilers about current stuff in threads that aren't about that current stuff. Not posting thread titles that are themselves spoilers.

i.e. The equivalent of standing outside bookstores yelling "[character] dies!"

In threads/forums about whatever the current stuff is, I don't see any reason to hide spoilers. People can not read them if they don't want to be spoiled. Maybe consider specific "non-spoiler" threads for people who just want release information.

For people coming to older stuff for the first time, they can request people don't spoil it for them and it'd be churlish to go against that -- but it's unreasonable to request spoilers be hidden in a thread in which people are already discussing the subject; again, those not wanting to be spoiled can not read the thread until they've caught up.
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Post by Halfshell »

Cliffjumper wrote:Shock twists are generally (very generally) a recent thing, especially your Usual Suspects/Lost type things which largely rely on them... I've never particularly seen the point in people looking at spoilers for that type of thing - they're so driven by twists that if you know what's ahead surely there's no point in actually watching.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItWasHisSled

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... CryingGame

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Post by Cliffjumper »

I maintain The Crying Game was far superior when Forrest Whittaker was onscreen.
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