Discussion Administrivia / HandlingSpoilers

I agree, the policy (if their isn't one) should go; Minimize additions from later chapters/episodes where possible, if necessary add spoiler tags on information chapters/episodes released later, to give an example; movie 2/Wrath of Khan's recap (1 - TMI, 2 - more acceptable, maybe still too much revealed.)

• Killed Off for Real Spock. [[spolier: later revealed to have survived by bladdy bladdy bollocks.]]
• Killed Off for Real Spock. [[spolier: or not..]]

There is a policy, according to the forum! Which is summed up as "Only things up to the last second of the entry being discussed exist". Which means future stuff shouldn't even be spoilered, it shouldn't be mentioned at all. I'd assume stuff that by its nature includes future stuff (Like Harsher/Hilarious in Hindsight) would either go on the entry that makes it Harsher (or Hilarious), or on the franchise page. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16269161060A65622900&page=1

Understandable. The rather bizarre policy of not spoiler-tagging the names of tropes that are, in context, spoilers themselves, has ruined quite a few big twists for me. The explanation given below is that "they won't know if it's worth uncovering the spoiler," but why this applies to the name and not the body of the text makes zero sense to me. As well as "most work pages don't have tropes that are spoilers," which based on my experience is just flagrantly false. I also don't know why "it makes the page subjectively look bad to people who don't have spoiler tags disabled" is considered worse than "it ruins an experience for people who were under the mistaken impression this site takes a modicum of effort to not spoil things."

This is super late for a reply, but for anybody else curious about this, this is literally impossible to do. You cannot protect yourself from spoilers while editing a page before text effects take place. If you want to dodge such spoilers, your safest bet is stay away from editing such pages until you're sufficiently up to date to know all the spoilers already.

I think I meant the History page. Doesn't matter now.

I think these character descriptions have been considered "no-go" as well.

Well, I've just come from the Bravely Default characters list (Glantz empire) where that interpretation has lead a trooper to, for lack of a better word, butcher two particularly spoiler heavy entries, the Kaiser, and the Yokai. Those two have particularly heavy spoilers associated with them.

I'm trying to decide what should be done to fix that, but can't exactly go about that on my own, lest I provoke an edit war.

I don't think there is a policy for spoilers on WMG pages. Something worth discussing in Wiki Talk, I think.

Okay, will do. Thanks for the advice.

Nah, too many people will become far too trigger happy if we had such a rule. And it doesn't override the "no spoiler tags over trope names" rule.

Important enough that if the pothole is a spoiler, it does not belong. Spoiler tags don't hide links.

Shall I take that to mean that potholing is actually the greater evil in situations like the one I described?

If readers don't know what trope the example is about, then the whole example serve no purpose.

No purpose? How does it serve no purpose, when all that is needed is highlighting it?

And being spoiled then? And how do they know that it's worth reading in the first place?

The thing is, they wouldn't highlight it, if they didn't have knowledge that they already fully experienced the media in question.

As it stands now, most pages just have spoilers in trope names, out in the open.

Well, they will, because some people come here regardless, but they won't know if it's worth uncovering the spoiler. A generalization is not appropriate here. Nevermind that most trope names aren't spoilers and most work pages don't have tropes that are spoilers.

And why exactly should we exclude tropes from work pages? This site's primarily goal is to list tropes, why should we exclude them because they're spoilers? They should just be covered, simple as that.

Trope names should be covered if they're spoilers just like any spoiler, highlighting means that you understand that what you're reading is a spoiler and decide to read it regardless. It's really simple, I really don't see why it should be otherwise.

I don't know about the first, either.

As for the second, nope. One cannot know that without having at least some info.

Plus, covered tropes will be spoiled the moment you hover your mouse over it. It's Self-Fulfilling Spoiler to a degree.

"This site's primarily goal is to list tropes, why should we exclude them because they're spoilers? They should just be covered, simple as that."

I agree that our primarily goal is to list tropes, but disagree that they should be covered.

They're actually two sepearte matters, listing tropes is your goal as a troper, covering spoiler is what you do as a fan of the work. Surely, since this is TV Tropes, being troper should be on higher priority. But since that would be too much, as we're all fans of some works, missing one or two tropes in exchange of neatly-looking page is acceptable compromise (at least that's how I see it).

Hint. When a work or character is too much spoiler-heavy, then we actually give up using spoiler tag altogether. Instead, we put warning at the top of examples that there're lot of uncover spoiler, or in case of Walking Spoiler character, give them a separate folder with same warning.

Here are Self-demonstrating examples.

• Big Bad: By simply hide the antagonist's name, but with remaining description visible except some really important thing that would make our readers aware who he is, the reader will know exactly if they want to be spoiled or not. More important, it still deliver the info even without spoiler highlight.
• Bigger Bad: While hiding whole context no longer get you suspend, it's still bad. The reader know the trope is suppose to be spoiler, but unless they want to be spoiled, they has no idea how this trope applies to the antagonist. Plus, the long white bar look ugly. It should be fix, but tolerable.
• Ultimate Evil: So...our reader has no idea what this entry is about, how can they judge if they want to be spoiled or not without uncover it?

(Sorry for bad English, I would run this through Get Help with English thread if they're real examples, but I guess it's ok for discussion page).

Still, like Kuruni said, what should be done about Walking Spoiler characters?

For example there's one in the anime I recently watched, which kinda has things like "Sharing a Body", "Robotic Reveal", "Hollywood Cyborg", etc... on a character who is at first introduced as a normal human being.

Well, is that reveal a spoiler? Not every reveal is.

A spoiler folder is frequently applied in such circumstances.

Often, the Walking Spoiler characters got separate folder at the bottom, with warning that which it has NO spoiler tag at all.

One nice trick that I love is that, if it's Two Aliases, One Character, then just write them as they're two characters. With some clever writing, you can write about Bob The Lancer with only minimum spoiler tag, then put all plot twist under Evulz the Big Bad in Walking Spoiler folder (think, if the reader think Bob is simple Nice Guy, just seeing lot and lot of white bar will make them aware that there's something more about him already).

What about tropes like Downer Ending, where the name itself is the spoiler?

These should be omitted from listing, although I'd imagine that not all such entries are spoilers.

Why should they be omitted? Isn't our focus to catalogue tropes?

Technically we shouldn't, but fans can be too sensitive.

If you have doubt, go ahead and put Spoilered Rotten tropes. As long as it's valid example, doesn't violate other rule, and you don't insist to put it back in Edit War when someone else remove it, then you're fine. I'm pretty sure nobody ever got suspend because of it, unlike spoil-coverred trope name.

^^Because that is what the policy says. Either leave the spoiler out or remove the trope, but no spoiler tagging of the trope name. I don't like it much, either.

In the past, when I put a spoiler in a note rather than inline, I used the labelnote tag to make it say "^spoiler spoiler" — I don't know of anything like a policy on the subject.

You're confused, "the casual reader" isn't same as "casual fan". nd n matter how big your favourite show's fanbase is, the former is alway outnumbered the latter (there maybe exception like The Bible, but those titles are under Spoilers Off policy anyway).

I hate those all-white blocks of spoilered-out text too, but they're not that hard to avoid while still covering up the spoiling trope titles. Thing is, people often go into a lot more detail than they have to when listing examples. Especially on work pages, where the elaboration part is really just meant to be a memory jog for those who have watched/read/played/etc the work in question.

Whenever trope names are spoiler tagged, it's probably a good idea to at least try to keep the elaboration part as spoiler-free in itself as possible, or even leave out the elaboration entirely if it's not needed. For example:

• All Just a Dream: Episodes 22-23, as it turns out.
• Dead to Begin With: Alice.
• Downer Ending

These might be found on a work page in the trope listing (with other tropes listed in between, of course), or at the bottom of the page under a warning header.

That's still absolutely useless as a trope example. You may as well not include them in the page at all.

Quite frankly, I don't know why this wiki, a wiki dedicated to cataloging every nuance of media, is taking the "we must coddle them" approach to people who don't want anything spoiled, ever.

Wikipedia stopped that crap years ago. This isn't a forum, this is a wiki. If you don't want to know that a work had a Downer Ending, don't freaking read a page dedicated to dissecting every plot element of a work. Otherwise, accept you're taking a chance and it's not the wiki's responsibility to protect you from your own curiosity.

^Exactly. Don't come to a site dedicated to dismantling stories to view their component narrative conventions unless you are prepared to see a narrative trick laid bare. It's the raison d'etre of the site.

It's bad enough finding trope examples with holes in them as people try to hide who the tropes are about, but to hide the actual trope itself! That is counter to the very purpose of the wiki. Either learn to write an example so it explains the trope and how it is used without giving too much away, or just learn to shrug and take the hit.

Eh, I think the page is useful

I'm in agreement here. Spoiling the actual trope is really silly. For example, just because the trope Someone to Remember Him By is listed as a trope in the work does not mean a principal character dies. It could be:

• a Minor character
• A secondary character
• The person dying is the father of the protagonist and he dies in the prologue.

And honestly if you're reading about the tropes in a work before actually seeing/watching the work you're practically asking for it. The details should be spoiledized, but the trope title? No.

A bit late, but adding my voice of agreement; spoilering the trope names is a step too far. It's next to useless and it makes the page look ugly and difficult to read.

If there's two things I get, it's this: 1.) No spoilering trope names, period; and 2.) No spoilering examples on trope pages.

But what about adding a trope name on a work and character pages, and then spoilering out the example explaining it? For instance:

• Alternate Reality: The whole story's setting is one to ours.
• Heel–Face Turn: Alice.
• Wham Episode: Episode 10.

Personally, I think doing this is almost, if not just, as bad as a Zero Context Example: it shows the "what" without showing the "why/how". Even worse, some people are treating it as an excuse to add a trope to work and character pages without spoilering out the trope name, even when the name of the trope itself is a spoiler for that work or one of its characters. I could see it being a double-edged sword since not all such trope names are big spoilers, but my reservations are outweighing it.

Well, the issue is that if the spoiler material is essential to an example, there is no good way to work with it.

If spoilering tropes names that are big spoilers like a character death is not allowed, why have spoiler tags at all? If everyone seems to hate them, why not get rid of them all? It's pointless to spoiler the explanation of a karmic death in a character's page when the trope itself is unmarked. And if you're fine with spoilers, there are options to have all spoilers unmarked.

The page explains why spoiler tagging a trope name is disallowed: This is a site about tropes and if you have to look below the spoiler to check whether the trope's worth being spoiled for, it's pointless.

That applies to trope names and work names and these two only. It doesn't apply to all material that can be covered with spoiler tags.

In your Karmic Death example, the death itself is only part of the spoiler; the "how and when" is also part of it. There are degrees of spoilers.

I get the general idea of the movement, it's well meaning and if nothing else forces people to not simply go "Killed Off for Real: At the end of Season 2", for instance.

However, one thing that really confuses me is in the instance of a major twist. We have a character, let's say Bob for argument's sake, who towards the end of the work is revealed to be the real Big Bad in place of someone else, a werewolf and a serial killer. The last of those you could probably get away with leaving unspoiled, but the second's a little more difficult. Or in the case of the first, borderline downright impossible. The manner of his death (impalement), and the fact that he dies can be left unspoiled, that much is easy-ish enough as long as the specific circumstances are not- i.e. I can mention that Bob is impaled without immediately spoiling it being fatal. The reason I ask is because I'm drafting an entry for a fanfic and have a similar situation to this. What do I do? Thanks for helping out a policy noob, much appreciated.

Easy enough. List Big Bad in your fanfic namespace, with the chracter name spoiled. Say nothing about it in characters sheet.

Alternately, if the character is Walking Spoiler, give them a seperate folder with spoiler-off warning. This is especially cool (IMO) if the character operates under another name, just seperate it as if they're different characters.

Thanks :D Will do.

"If you don't want to know that a work had a Downer Ending, don't freaking read a page dedicated to dissecting every plot element of a work"

Ok, but what if you're reading about that work, and the trope page references the sequel and spoils it for you? Should the rule really be "don't ever read about a work unless you've read/watched every last thing in its series"?

Greetings,

might want to ask that on Ask The Tropers.

There is a level of inquisitiveness that spoilers should be a given for. Main Page and YMMV should have spoilers covered, but not the trope names - that's a little silly. However... when you get into Character pages, WMG, Headscratchers - why would a person who doesn't want to be spoiled even go to those pages if they haven't seen/read/played the work?

Then there's the issue with how long a work goes. One movie - I don't see the point in covering spoilers. You haven't seen it, then you invest two hours of your time and you've seen it. Done.

A TV series like Stargate SG-1 that goes on for seven seasons it makes sense to have spoilers. You can't possibly expect a person to watch over 100 hours of a show before going to the page and adding a trope for something that happened in episode 3.

Video games are somewhere in between, I guess. Getting to your question, I'd factor in how long it takes to play video games, etc. Honestly though - I don't touch character pages until I'm firmly entrenched in a series, not first season/game.

I'm not sure how it's stupid, though; a Death Trope, for example, is by it's fundamental nature a spoiler, since if you're talking about a work in the context of death then it's a fairly safe bet that one of the characters is going to bite it. Otherwise, why even bring it up on that page? This, in turn, means that what's likely to be a fundamentally important part of the work is likely to be included just being on the page.

Ergo, it seems a bit silly and futile to be constantly spoilering things when the trope itself is a fundamental spoiler. That way leads to madness and an entire page which is nothing but white, blanked out space (with maybe a few titles if you're lucky, seeing how some people love spoilering absolutely everything). I mean, I can see the case for maybe rewording it to something like, say, "all spoilers pertaining to character death will be unmarked" (replace the bold depending on the nature of the page in question) in order to distinguish between the spoiler material that the trope addresses and any other unrelated spoilers that might happen to be included as part of the example (such as, for example, the fact that Alice's death leads to the unmasking of Bob as the Troper Killer; the former is fair game as part of the page, the latter isn't), but I do feel that such pages require more leeway than others when it comes to spoilers.

And frankly, because someone has to say it, I'm going to: Caveat lector. Let the troper beware. Maybe it's because I don't particularly care about spoilers, but frankly I'm getting a bit tired of the mass-scale squeamishness about spoilers that goes around (in general more than on this wiki specifically). Having something you haven't read or seen deliberately ruined by someone else out of spite is one thing, but if you're on a wiki devoted to breaking down complete works of fiction into their component elements reading the examples on a page which by it's very nature is a spoiler, then frankly, it's your own damn fault if you come across something you didn't want to. These component elements by nature will include spoilers. We joke about the addictive properties of TV Tropes, but in all seriousness, it's just a wiki; no one is forced to be here. Unless someone is holding a gun to your head and making you read the spoiler page, you've got no one else to blame but yourself in that situation. You've been provided with an adequate warning that the content you're reading is likely to contain spoilers — if you choose to read ahead, you don't get to whine about being spoiled.

Your second paragraph explains a good chunk of my complaint neatly: often is not the same as all: even a climax of a work can be split into completely unrelated parts as in that example. Goes double for when the content covers multiple sensitive tropes at once; and in principle (haven't seen this in the wild that I can remember) legit non-spoilers shouldn't be able to "infect" later parts of the work. Someone being born pre-credits should not mean Bob's identity is given away either (no I can't imagine a well-written entry that would actually suffer from this problem, but ...the mistake is still with the warning).

The other issue I have with the warning is that it's usually factually wrong since most authors of individual entries continue to exercise common sense and only apply the pseudo-rule to the relevant parts of the example.

Agree about the last part, but if you're going to implement something...

In this specific case, it might be easier just to refer to the character by her/his name and ignore titles — so, in this case, calling him Bob rather than Lord Bob or High Lord Bob.

That would fall under the "Bob Kills Alice" example, though, with the added detail that it's the fact that he likes pie that gives him away. The fact that Bob likes pie is not, by itself, a spoiler; it's just a character trait. So something like this would be fine:

• Bob likes pecan pie. Sam overhearing him order a slice is the clue that leads him to a "Eureka!" Moment that reveals that Bob murdered Alice.

Whereas something like this is unnecessary overkill because the first spoiler isn't concealing anything particularly meaningful and only serves to add unnecessary obscurity.

• Bob likes pecan pie. Sam overhearing him order a slice is the clue that leads him to a "Eureka!" Moment that reveals that Bob murdered Alice.

Actually, we're currently discussing how to handle that in this Wiki Talk thread. So far, the discussion says that all-white tropes even on character pages are not allowed, but how to list them instead is not decided upon.

Probably not.

It's covered by "no spoilers above the example line".

It would just be a clarification. "That includes page quotes" or something like that could be added.

No.

Because it ends with the entire cast swearing the audience to secrecy.

About ten-fifteen years ago UK comedian Paul Merton revealed the end as a joke on his stage show. There was a national outcry in the press and the rumour was that the Queen even wrote to him to ask him not to do it again. It is Serious Business. And a bit of fun too. Mainly the bit of fun.

I'm confus. Is the idea that we should not use spoiler trope names at all, or that we shouldn't spoiler tag them? Because certain tropes, such as The Bad Guy Wins, are spoilers just by being there. Even the trope entries say they have unmarked spoilers. If the spoiler trope is taken off the work's page, and left on the trope entry, with a note made on the work's discussion page, would that work for you?

Once you've gone so far as spoiler tagging the name of the trope and all of the example text, you've defeated the purpose of trope page. Just accept that someone reading a list of tropes in a show they haven't watched has no room to complain if they read the words Downer Ending in the trope list. The rest of us shouldn't suffer for someone that wants the wiki sanitized because they can't be bothered to actually view the work but want us to act like they might.

I firmly disagree with that. If we follow your logic, then why do we even bother to have spoiler tag at all, if we are supposed to have see the show completely first ? I for one expect no to know how the show end, especially if the show in question hasn't been completely translated in my language (French)first. I don't even see how this could be considered a problem : if you can't be spoiled, than you can set the spoil tag off. If not, let them be. I wish that the rules are modified so that each trope which are spoiler just by being there are hidden by default.

Not using spoiler space at all on works pages would be perfectly fine. If people want to know about the show without getting spoiled, they can read the show description and ignore the trope list.

However, not everyone would be willing to go that far, so we've arrived at a reasonable compromise: make sure the examples are useful even to someone who can't see spoiler space.

Remember, the majority of people reading this site are not editors. They don't have the option of turning the spoiler tag off. We have to cater for them, not just ourselves.

I was about to say that you can always highlight the spoiler (that's what I do), but seeing below that some people can't do that is of course a major flaw in my argumentation. However, this seems to be a rare hardware limitation and thus can be ignored for the greater good. Is there another place to discuss this, or am I at the right place ?

It's not a rare hardware limitation. It applies to anyone who isn't logged in, which is the majority of our readership.

Spoiler policy could also be discussed on the forums, but here is fine.

Sorry for the late reply. I truly don't understand what you mean. TV Tropes ruin my life since last summer, I am an editor since two weeks (idem for the registration), and I was always able to highlight the spoiler just with selecting the spoiled word with my mouse, and that's still what I do.

Anyone can highlight spoilers, but only editors can turn them off permanently.

Having large chunks of the examples under spoiler space means that any non-editors just see lots of white space, and no useful text. While they can always highlight it, if we expect everyone to do that, or even a majority, there's no point having spoiler space in the first place. Instead, the page must be intelligible to people who aren't highlighting, which implies spoiler space ought to be limited to short stretches of text, and used only when there is no alternative non-spoilery phrasing.

I think there should be spoiler tags in Twist Ending tropes and Death tropes and the like. I know that the examples' simple presence in the trope page can be a spoiler, but I would like to be able to read those pages and choose for myself which specific details I want to be spoiled on, rather than having to avoid the pages entirely.

But against that minor convenience, you've got to weigh the impact of having an entire page riddle with spoiler tags, so that non-editors see vast swathes of blank space, with no choice in the matter.

What we've got is a typical compromise position; everyone gets some minor inconvenience, rather than a few getting exactly what they want while the rest get trampled on.

I honestly don't see the problem with spoilering a few trope names, as long as they don't have Wall of Text descriptions behind them. As pointed out above, some trope names will absolutely ruin a good twist ending just by their presence, so unless we institute a This work has a twist ending spoiler warning (which (a) negates the purpose of spoiler tags in the first place, and (b) spoils the twist itself to some extent), people are going to have those things ruined for them with no warning...

There was a suggestion on the forums that there should be a folder for tropes that are spoilered rotten. It's superior to spoilered-out trope names, because it's invulnerable to inadvertent mouse-overs as well as alphabetical deductions (if there's a spoilered-out trope in the Ks, hello instant Shoot the Shaggy Dog feeling).

So we will edit block you. This is a firm long standing rule.

If spoilers have to be said they can be done so in the tropes. The main body is something of a synopsis of the work.

You can edit your profile here. If you ever need to go back, you can always reach that link from the forum main page.