Spoilers Off for old works?

Which are called Spoilered Rotten, which oddly mentioned in the description and not in the list.

Edited by Amonimus on May 10th 2023 at 9:15:04 PM

I mean, we certainly could change the wording and formatting, but again — right now what we have is a rule that's on a list of other rules, and we can't start changing it to call it a suggestion unless we have consensus to drop or alter this rule in the first place.

Given the page already mentions the Spoilered Rotten rule but seemingly forgets to put it in the summary list, I don't see any issue or policy change in adding it as a bullet. It's just clarifying what the page(s) already say.

I'm not talking about the Spoilered Rotten stuff (that's sort of off topic for this discussion anyway), but about the original thing we were discussing. That is, that I don't think we can just separate the "old works" bit from the rest of the list without in the process removing it as a rule, which for all intents and purposes it's been treated as for ages, necessitating all the debates in the first place.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 10th 2023 at 5:08:12 AM

Revisiting this - conscious discussion stalled, and I'd like to come back to it, but one specific question to start with:

This version of the Spoilers Off wording appears on at least a few old plays.

I'm not a fan, as I think the fact it's freely available on websites is irrelevant to the current spoiler policy (unlike - rightly or wrongly - its age), and including it as a justification is just going to confuse tropers.

Any objections if I replace this with the other version, at least until we come to a wider consensus on these?

Definitely. It's pure nonsense; in this internet age, spoilers are available for any work, but that doesn't stop people being conscious about avoiding spoilers.

A little thread necromancy following on from this post about The Great Gatsby.

That was published in 1925 and now out of copyright. Our other benchmark, Older Than Radio, is 1890. That's a reasonably big gap.

Can I suggest that, until we come to a consensus on the wider policy we try to get agreement to:

• Remove the "out of copyright" ref, which some tropers have used to remove tagging on much newer works placed into public domain.
• Add a note that current spoiler policy on a page shouldn't be changed without forum consensus. So if we do have a 1910 book in a grey area, any currently tagged spoilers stay tagged unless there's agreement.

(We already have a note to that effect on the Characters page spoiler rules)

The "out of copyright" misuse for works that are public domain for other reasons has been brought up before, usually proposing an "exception" to keep those spoilers tagged. (Probably unnecessary since the public domain thing is in a section called "particularly old works" on the Spoilers Off page.)

I think the reasoning is more that, if you're worried about spoilers, there's nothing stopping you from e.g. opening Gutenberg in another tab and then reading it before coming back to the trope page. The same is not true of copyrighted works.

(Whether that's a valid concern is another story, of course. I don't think it holds up as well for series that require a significant time investment no matter how old they are, for instance, and I say that despite the opinion that spoiler protections are overvalued in general.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Sep 4th 2023 at 1:43:02 PM

"The same is not true of copyrighted works."

How so?

Copyrighted works aren't as easy to access, unless you "sail the seven seas".

If works generally not being published for free was a problem we wouldn't have most of wiki pages.

...how does that follow? The wiki page existing requires at least one person to have had access to the work. Public domain libraries allow everyone to have immediate access to the work.

Yes, and most works we have are not in public domain and assumes the one person writing the page is even being accurate.

...right, but we're talking about the ones that are.

I think that any work that's older than say, the oldest living person should be spoilers off. Spoilers usually work best with just released or wrapped up works. Spoilering, say, how The Bible or Koran end, or how The Illiad ends probably isn't going to offend anyone or ruin their experience with it.

Religious texts and myths are already exempted from the spoiler policy, and are always spoilers off.

Oh ok then

It's fine to tag Jesus dies in moderation, but that joke's played out by now.