I put this open for discussion, since it’s not come up before. Suppose that there is news about casting in a show – I’m specifically thinking of a TV show, it seems unlikely (though not impossible) to come up with a movie. Should that be considered a possible “spoiler”? Should the thread titles not be specific?
Fictional example: Candice Bergen to leave BOSTON LEGAL midseason.
Does that imply that her character will die? Does that reveal that some sort of plot twist is coming up? If I hear that news and want to post about it, should I use discretion in the thread title?
I think it’s a judgment call. If the arc of the season seems to indicate that a character might die and you have news like that, I’d spoiler it. But otherwise no.
I think it’s probably a good idea to be more cryptic in the title: “Midseason cast change on Boston Legal.” Spoiler warnings or tags are probably not necessary within the thread, however.
Real life example from last season’s Battlestar Galactica: Last year, I had been spoiled that Katie Sackhoff was going to be absent from the last half of the Battlestar Galactica season, and I wish I hadn’t known.
If it is in its own thread like the CSI one, I don’t think spoilers are needed within the thread. If it is in the middle of a thread about an episode and people are speculating about whether a character will live or die, a statement that Candice Bergen will have another character get cancer and this time die before the season ends, should be in spoiler tags. Some would dislike finding out ahead of time.
Jim {that was of course a what if based on C.K.'s Op, I have no clue or hint that Candice Bergen is leaving BL}
I think the guideline is simple: Has an important plot point been revealed in an already-aired episode? If not, then it should be spoilered (or, at the very least, not spashed out in the thread title).
With DVR becoming more and more the norm, we get more people who watch TV the way my wife and I do – things are never watched live (hell, we don’t even start watching football games until they’re an hour in, just so we can skip commercials). We intentionally skip all commercials, previews, promos and teasers. If something isn’t part of the actual episode, we don’t know about it.
Simply put, we’d call foul on a thread title of “Boston Legal 10/16 – Bergen’s Last Episode”, and that’s after the show aired. Spoilering a character leaving well before the episode airs raises my hackles.
I know that it’s impossible to stay completely spoiler-free on every count, and the info I got from the thread title in question isn’t going the ruin the show for me (the writers are doing a good enough job of that on their own), but it seems to me that if things like this can be avoided, then then they should be.
I’m probably in an extreme minority, but I think the spoilering stuff has gone way overboard here. I’m all for no spoilers in titles, but inside the thread, the OP should be allowed to determine whether they want or don’t want to talk about spoiled things. If it’s marked SPOILERS and I don’t want to be spoiled, then if I’m dumb enough to open it I get what I deserve.
I’m mostly concerned with thread titles. If I see a thread title like the example “Cast change on Boston Legal” then I can choose whether or not to read it based on whether I watch the show and whether I’m someone who wants to know all the upcoming changes or not. At that point it doesn’t matter whether information inside the thread is spoiled, I’ve made my choice to look. A thread title like “Candice Bergen to leave Boston Legal midseason” gives me no choice – once I’ve seen it, I’m stuck with it.
The recent CSI example bothered me particularly because the show has been heavily promoting storyline developments which will be seriously affected by the spoiler in the thread title, even if we don’t exactly know how. My enjoyment of the current story arc will be definitely be impacted by my knowledge of this spoiler. (Full disclosure: This piece of information had been spoiled for me prior to my seeing the thread in question. I just hoped that others could avoid the same disappointment.)
I’m the one who started that thread. I wasn’t trying to spoiler anything…I considered it news, that an actor was leaving a show. It won’t diminish my enjoyment of the show…we still don’t know how and when Sara will depart.
I think the days are long gone when Diana Muldar can fall down an elevator shaft and shock the hell out of everybody. There are press releases, news items, etc. If TPTB over at CSI wanted to keep her departure under wraps, they could have done so.
Still, I will try to be more careful in the future. I’m truly sorry if I ruined it for anyone.
I take precisely the opposite view. Different people have different levels of what they consider spoiler… how much effort does it take you to add a spoiler box, or select one to read the stuff in it, versus the amount of fun that can be taken away from someone who gets spoiled?
Why NOT always be over-cautious with spoilers? Why not be a nice person?
Not only do I not think those two are tied together, if anything they’re contradictory. How much effort does it take not to open a thread at all that’s labelled SPOILERS? On the other hand, for people to participate in a thread where we all want open spoilers, if we box them, there is extra work involved for writers and readers. Let people have open conversations if they want to. Why not be a nice person?
ivylass: your apology is sweet, but unnecessary. The issue hasn’t ever come up before, so far as I am aware, so there was no reason for you to be more cautious in thread titles.
Now that it has come up, I’ll let people air feelings a bit more, but I think we’re coming down (where we sort of started):
Avoid spoilers in thread titles
If there are going to be open spoilers, then mark the thread title “Open Spoilers”
If the thread title doesn’t warn, and you post a spoiler, please use the spoiler tags
Liberal, it’s clearly a bit of give-and-take on both sides. Those who don’t want spoilers should be warned in advance (by thread titles saying “Open spoilers”, frinstance) so they needn’t go into a thread that might include spoilers. On the other hand, others should be considerate of those who don’t want spoilers, and be sure to title their threads accordingly or use spoiler tags within a thread.
I have to agree. I don’t watch CSI, nor did I read the thread, yet I already knew what actress was leaving. It was in the newspaper I had read that morning. And while I didn’t read the article, the headline told me all that I didn’t really need to know.
It hurts my eyes to read spoiler boxes. The white text on black background burns a ghost image into my vision very quickly, and it lasts for a disconcerting amount of time. Thus, I truly can’t stand spoiler boxes.
A spoiler box like this, OTOH, is fine by me:
This style has several advantages:[ul][li]No eye strain[/li][li]Text won’t appear in email notifications[/li][li]Text won’t appear in mouseover preview (I think)[/li][li]Text won’t appear in “reply to” window, allowing you to reply to non-spoiler text without stumbling across an embedded spoiler somewhere else in the post.[/li][*]True spoiler boxes – for whatever reason – occasionally fail on the SDMB for up to a day at a time, and all that spoiler text is just sitting there naked as the day it was born. As far as I am aware, quote boxes and colored text have never failed to work.[/ul]ETA: Use white color tags inside a quote box to achieve this style of spoiler box.
In the thread: Some people leave “spoiler space” in the OP for mouseovers. I don’t care either way although I lean toward finding it a little silly (don’t want to read the mouseover? Don’t mouse over it).
If the material has aired, whether in the episode proper or in the previews, it’s fair game. If someone doesn’t want to be spoiled about what happened in the recent episode of TV: The Series that they have on DVR but haven’t watched yet, then they shouldn’t open the thread. Common sense dictates that a thread about an episode of a TV show is going to discuss the contents of the TV show. I didn’t read any of the UK-originated Doctor Who or Torchwood threads until after the episode aired in the US.
If the material has not aired, then it should be spoilered.
I’m going to say that since not safe for work words were determined to be acceptable in titles, it would be hypocritical not to allow the sort of extremely mild spoiler the OP raises for discussion. I actually think the situation under discussion is far less problematic than opening the main board page at work and having “Fuck you with Thor’s sparkling…” appear in the Last Post column even if I choose not to open the Pit at work for reasons of propriety.
I agree, the show mentioned by date or name should be expected to have open spoilers about that show and pasts episodes. It should not have open spoilers about future episodes. Dr. Who and Torchwood are perfect examples as US Dopers are pretty much the last ones to view these shows and it stinks on the rare occasion that a Doper spoiled future episodes with the argument in was all over the web. (Strangely enough, I think it was a US doper that found an alternate means to see the shows before they aired in the US)
I would hope that any movie over a year old could have open spoilers, it seems silly to have to spoiler that Richard Dreyfus’ character flew off with the UFO in Close Encounters or that Rosebud was the sled.
I would tend to err on the side of caution. “So-and-so leaving TeeVeeShow!” would be a suboptimal title. “Cast member leaving TeeVeeShow (possible spoilers)” is better. Within the threads I don’t know. I tend not to read casting threads so I don’t have a lot of experience with how they play out.
