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A spoiler is a piece of information in an article about a narrative work (such as a book, feature film, television show or video game) that reveals plot events or twists. If someone hasn't read, watched or played the material to which the warning refers, they might wish to avoid reading the spoiler before fully experiencing the work. Because some people prefer to avoid spoilers, however, it became common on the Internet to put before such descriptions a spoiler warning. In scholarly reference works, however, this is rare, and thus spoiler warnings are generally avoided on Misplaced Pages.
Concern about spoilers should be given low weight in decisions about the structure, content, or formatting of an article. If a piece of information that could be considered a spoiler is one of the most essential aspects of a topic it should be present in the article lead. However, this may also be a sign that the topic does not deserve its own article, bearing in mind that however dramatic a plot-twist may be in the context of the fictional world, it is probably a fairly standard authorial maneuver from the real-world perspective that should be used in Misplaced Pages.
Decisions about what content is essential in the lead or in the body of the article is always at the discretion of the editor. Nothing in Misplaced Pages policy or the Manual of Style mandates that plot summaries should be so detailed that spoilers must inevitably be included.
Note that in cases where plot details genuinely are not widely known (i.e. not discussed in secondary sources but only in the primary source, i.e. the fictional work itself) care must be taken not to violate Misplaced Pages's policies on original research.
Origins of spoiler warnings
Spoiler (media) discusses spoiler warnings: "The term spoiler is associated with specialist Internet sites and in newsgroup postings." The idea was not to spoil people's enjoyment of a current fictional work (usually a film or book) by discussing it before other readers would have had a chance to see or read it themselves.
Problems with spoiler warnings on Misplaced Pages
The use of spoiler warnings is controversial amongst Wikipedians. Key arguments against are:
- As Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, it should be assumed that it will contain information — in fact, it is stated explicitly in the general content disclaimer that "WIKIPEDIA CONTAINS SPOILERS AND CONTENT YOU MAY FIND OBJECTIONABLE".
- To warn about such content is redundant, since they usually occur in sections marked "Plot", "Plot Summary", or "synopsis".
- Such warnings are disproportionate — as a matter of policy (Misplaced Pages:No disclaimer templates) we don't warn about other objectionable content, including, in cases such as Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, content that people have been killed over.
- The term "spoiler," when used in this sense, is a neologism of the sort whose usage is discouraged in Misplaced Pages. (See Misplaced Pages: Manual of Style (neologisms)
Counter-arguments are:
- Few readers look at disclaimer pages. Much traffic to the relevant articles comes directly from search engines, bypassing Misplaced Pages's front matter. Due to GFDL, the text will frequently be present on other websites where our disclaimer is absent, so relying on the generic disclaimer implicitly violates Misplaced Pages:Avoid self-reference.
- Redundancy is not a sin: a significant level of redundancy is needed for effective communication. Moreover, some plot summaries don't contain spoilers.
- Spoiler warnings are the explicit exception to WP:NDT. In any case, arguments from analogy are frowned on (WP:ALLORNOTHING).
- A poor name is no reason to remove the function; at present no more acceptable name has been suggested.
Some Wikipedias forbid spoiler warnings entirely, e.g. German Misplaced Pages (de:Misplaced Pages:Spoilerwarnung).
When not to use spoiler warnings
- Spoiler warnings must not interfere with neutral point of view, completeness, encyclopedic tone, or other elements of article quality.
- Spoiler warnings must not be used on ancient texts, literary classics, classic films, or works whose plot is 'common knowledge'. While this is often obvious, grey-area situations should avoid the use of spoiler templates or discuss the matter on the individual article's talk page.
- Spoiler warnings must never be used for non-fictional subjects or in articles on primarily non-fictional subjects (e.g. authors, real-life places that fictional texts are set, literary concepts like twist ending).
- Spoiler tags are redundant when used in ==Plot== or other sections that are clearly going to discuss the plot. Using such headers is stylistically preferable to a tag.
- Articles about fictional characters, objects or places are, by their nature, focused on details of the fiction in question, and thus do not need spoiler warnings. Note that such articles must still be written from an out-of-universe perspective.
When and how to use spoiler warnings
- Spoiler warnings may be used in articles whose primary subject is fictional where the editors proposing them can provide a compelling and justifiable reason to insert one. Such reasons should show that knowledge of the spoiler would likely substantially diminish many readers' enjoyment of the work.
- A spoiler warning is a courtesy note to readers, such as those who find articles from search engine results. As such it's more of a reminder note and not a label to be used for every plot summary—only those which contain serious spoilers, and even then at the discretion of the consensus of editors for each article. Such a note is never guaranteed.
- It is sometimes acceptable to remove a spoiler about a fictional work from an article whose primary subject is not that work - particularly if the spoiler is added as a piece of trivia, or as an example when a non-spoiler example would do just as well. For instance one might reasonably, if consensus for this exists, remove information about a plot twist in a film about ghosts from the article Ghost, but not from the article about that film. Such a deletion is worth considering if inclusion of the spoiler (in a largely unrelated article) makes a disruptive warning seem appropriate.
- Use only {{Spoiler}} to mark spoilers.
Unacceptable alternatives
The following methods should never be used to obscure spoilers:
- Deleting relevant, neutral and verifiable information about a narrative work from a Misplaced Pages article about that work "because it's a spoiler".
- Making "spoiler free" parallel versions (content forks) of an article about a fictional work. (Since Misplaced Pages content is available under the text of the GNU Free Documentation License, creating parallel versions outside of Misplaced Pages is generally acceptable.)
- Structuring an article around spoilers, confining them to a particular area of the article (e.g. under ==Plot==), when unnecessary or in a way that decreases article quality.
- In various Internet discussion forums, a widespread convention is the insertion of blank (or virtually blank) lines before a spoiler (which removes the offending text from the reader's view, until he/she scrolls to the next page). Obviously, this is unacceptable in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
- On the Usenet computer network, a popular method of concealing spoilers (and sometimes, offensive material) is ROT13 encryption. Again, this is unacceptable in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
- Another common method of hiding spoilers from readers is to change the color of the text to match that of the page background, thus rendering the text unreadable until highlighted by the reader in a selection. Hiding text in this manner is unacceptable here because it requires explanation to readers unfamiliar with the practice, and because it may be incompatible with computer accessibility devices such as screen readers. Also, some web browsers highlight text by inverting the colors of the text and background. In these browsers, for white text on a white background, highlighting produces black text on a black background. Also, it is possible for a user to set their browser to refuse to change text color (just as they can refuse to display images); text-only browsers (such as Lynx) may likewise disregard requests to change text color. In addition, it renders the text unprintable.