Spoilers Off for old works?

My reading was that it broadly aligns to the end of copyright (most restrictive rules) for modern works, but that it's not purely because it's the end of copyright.

Are we concerned about impacting sales or upsetting creators? If so, that doesn't stop us from marking much newer pages as Spoilers Off when twisty plots or fan consensus request it (e.g. pretty much all of the Star Wars films are currently spoilers off).

Or is it purely because of history and the belief that these works may be adapted and referenced so many times they slide towards It Was His Sled?

We definitely should not treat all works in the public domain as spoilers off.

I got bottom paged (and was accidentally responding to me and not Sean ) so I'll repost what I said here:

"I argued about the Bible on the last thread. Specifically, that it isn't a work designed to have spoilers. It's weird to go in and spoiler tag parts of a religious text, as though the people reading the page would really care one way or another to be "spoiled" on the events of a book like that."

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Yeah, I'd agree with that logic more than the It Was His Sled approach for them. And that should apply across all faiths (and myths that are no longer active faiths?).

At the moment Spoilers Off mentions the Bible in the "Particularly Old Works" bullet, but this feels as if it's actually a different rule (and one which can be fairly clear-cut), doesn't it?

Edited by Mrph1 on May 8th 2023 at 7:45:32 PM

Age aside, I'm of "no work is known by everyone" as well, especially since we've been on a thing that we can't really call something particularly famous or obscure. I would rather have case-by-case reviews if certain mythology/historical works count as spoilers or these weren't meant to be twists.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

So, it may be worth considering the argument I brought up when First-Episode Spoiler was renamed to First-Episode Twist. Which is, that spoilers, well... spoil the work for you. If something is a spoiler, it means that engaging with the work after being spoiled becomes less fun, since you already know the big twist. Something can't be a spoiler if, by definition, knowing it doesn't impact one's enjoyment of a work.

So, many myths don't have spoilers that would ruin a new listener's enjoyment of said myth, or at least, that's how I see it. I simply can't see religious works in general being "spoiled" since their point isn't to be entertaining, but to explain how things work or to pass along a moral.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That's why I'd exclude religions, myths, and legends. They've never been things you're expected to not know. While you'll get stories that have a clearly defined structure to them, someone telling you how it ends doesn't change anything because that's not the point. Never mind that they also often lie in the category of 'things other works expect you to have at least a reasonable familiarity with' (Achilles in His Tent is even a trope).

Avatar Source

I'll agree that mythology works don't have real spoilers because they don't really have a mystery that "you'll know when you read it", these are meant to be common knowledge to everyone of that culture.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

As I read the policy, neither Older Than Radio or post-copyright works are automatically considered Spoilers Off. Those are simply two examples of what constitutes a particularly old work. The Moustrap is listed as exception and I'm certain there are others.

It seems like the rule is essentially: "Newer works need justification to remove spoilers, older works need justification to keep spoilers." The rule isn't, and shouldn't be, absolute in either direction.

In which case, it should just be 'works need justifications to remove spoilers', full stop.

Avatar Source

I mean, for as long as I've known about the rule it's been treated as an absolute. I mean, most everything else under Spoiler's Off is treated as an absolute — such as the YMMV subpages (Fridge, Moments, etc), historical facts, and recap pages. There's no rationale to assume that this one example is somehow less absolute than everything else.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 8th 2023 at 5:19:54 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

But it might not be the worst approach to take, if there are already different perceptions of it.

"This is the default - and if you create a new works page that doesn't follow that rule, please add a comment to add context. If you want to change the policy for an existing works page, talk to the community about it to get consensus"

I mean, I don't disagree with the sentiment but right now there's no reason to think that's the current rule.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The phrase reads"this roughly coincides". I don't know how anyone can read that and come away thinking its an absolute rule. Even without the immediate inclusion of a prominent exception.

Because, as I said, everything else in that section is absolute. It's saying that old works are spoilers off, and our metric roughly coincides with PD works.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Here's a thought:

Spoilers Off currently has this heading above the bullet list:

Spoilers off for:

How about we split the list and create two headings?

---

Spoilers off may be appropriate for:

• Particularly old works
• Particularly spoiler-heavy work pages and trope pages.
• Entries in Character Sheets with Walking or Late Arrival Spoilers.

Spoilers off always applies to:

• Well-known historical facts.
• Mythology, legend and religion
• Recap and Timeline pages
• Fridge pages, Headscratchers, Wild Mass Guessing pages, and the various "Moments" subpages (e.g. Funny Moments, Heartwarming Moments, Moment of Awesome, Nightmare Fuel, Tear Jerker).
• Re-examination of past fictional events in a later installment
• Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard pages
• Trope Epitaph

---

If we do that, we don't need to rewrite all the bullets in the short term, but we're clarifying (and possibly tweaking) the current policy while we think about other aspects of any longer term approach?

An improvement. May also need a link the a thread that evaluates which pages can be spoiler markdown free if not default ones this thread acts as one.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

For the first list, I'd amend the first bullet point to read "Particularly old and renowned works" (or something along that line), but on the whole, what you've proposed here seems fair, sensible, and clear.

I think that's getting into the detail of how we rewrite the existing bullets (which doesn't necessarily need to be done at the same time), but I'm certainly not against that.

Ideally, I'd like any bullet on renowned works to be separated from any bullet on age considerations.

We have spoilers off for both Hamlet and the nine main Star Wars films because they're so culturally ubiquitous. It feels as if that It Was His Sled factor trumps any discussion about age.

Edited by Mrph1 on May 10th 2023 at 2:23:40 PM

Yeah, when you put it that way, it seems like age shouldn't even be a significant factor at all.

Edited by SeanMurrayI on May 10th 2023 at 6:33:03 AM

Wait, the new Star Wars stuff is spoilers off? Not going to lie, that seems kind of ridiculous. That feels like it's getting into serious fan myopia, even the prequels are a stretch... <_>

Edited by RainehDaze on May 10th 2023 at 6:21:55 PM

Avatar Source

Reaching critical spoiler mass (either by actually being plottwisty or tropers just overspoiling) and the logistics of troping cinematic universes are the arguments for spoilers offing everything post OT, not cultural ubiquity.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 10th 2023 at 12:24:41 PM

All nine main films are spoilers-off on their own pages, and it's excessively rare for original trilogy stuff to be spoiler-tagged elsewhere, but the prequels and sequels are frequently tagged on trope pages.

We need to make a distinction between "Spoilers Off on its own page" and "Spoilers Off across the wiki" for this reason.

Edited by bwburke94 on May 10th 2023 at 7:36:14 AM

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

The nine "Skywalker Saga" films are all Spoilers Off, as (I've just realised) are Rogue One and Solo. Not sure I support the decision, but the decision was made (somewhere). I'd be up for revisiting it some day, though.

(Worth noting that things like Indiana Jones, Star Trek films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe manage to keep tagging in place, though)

I'm all for the "spoilers for previous films won't be tagged" approach to franchises, but Star Wars is an example that seems to go beyond that.

Edited by Mrph1 on May 10th 2023 at 6:31:54 PM

Yeah, I personally think we should err on the side of tagging spoilers.

Per the suggested list of Spoilers Off Indicators, shouldn't we have a bullet for

• Trope pages for inherently spoilery tropes, including:
  • Death Tropes
  • Ending Tropes
  • Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard

(etc)