As a slightly relevant aside, I recently discovered that if you contain the first part of your first post within brackets, the text will not display in a tooltip when you hover over the thread title. And it will if you use the Spoiler box.
So use brackets around your first post and you won’t have to create space for the tooltip spoiler.
Trouble is, it’s not that simple. What about things that were in “next week on 24”? What about things you read in TV guide but think are common knowledge? What about things from ads for next week’s episode? And what about in threads other than the “Heroes 10/24/08” thread?
This argument will probalby never be settled, but I’m certain that your description of it is FAR too cut and dried.
Here are my proposed guidelines…
For TV Shows
In the weekly “Heroes 10/24/08” (or whatever) thread
-Starting at the point in time when the episode begins broadcast on the east coast, anything that was shown on-screen during the airing of the episode does NOT need to be spoilered. This typically includes ads and previews.
-EXCEPTION: For certain shows, the thread’s rules treat the “next week on…” previews differently. In particular, in 24 threads, discussions of the previews must be spoilered. I think that should always be the rule but that fight appears to be unwinnable
-Speculation need not be spoiler boxed, although you may do so for dramatic effect. But if you do, please label it as speculation. (And be aware that, apparently, people with iPhones won’t be able to read it.)
-Everything else SHOULD be spoiler boxed. So you read an article in TV guide a week ago saying that (I’m making this up) Kiefer Sutherland is leaving 24 in the middle of the next season? And you assume that that is now common knowledge? Well, it isn’t. And some people don’t want to hear that. Don’t casually mention it in the 24 thread. Instead, put it in a spoiler box, labelled with “hey, I read in TV Guide that…” or something like that.
In other threads about the show, ie, the thread title is “A question about Lost”
-Spoiler box EVERYTHING that will come as a surprise to someone who is just now sitting down to watch episode 1 of season 1. Some people come to shows late and watch them on DVD. And those people might have just watched the first few episodes and feel like they want to open this thread.
-ADDENDUM: If the thread title includes “(open spoilers)” then it should be assumed that spoilers will be present for every episode of the series that has aired.
-ADDENDUM: If the thread title is something like “Question about Buffy season 3”, then things from seasons 1 and 2 need not be spoilered, but things from seasons 3 onward should be spoilered.
In other threads that do not directly mention the show in the thread title:
-This is a tough one. On the one hand, almost no one would get mad if you didn’t spoiler random plot points from shows that aired 20 years ago. On the other hand, there are plenty of fairly recent shows along the lines of The Sopranos that people are still watching for the first time on DVD. So I think you have to strike a balance between how recent the show is, how popular it is, how well known the plot point already is, and how much of a shock/revelation the potentially spoiled moment is.
For Movies
-For current release movies, thread titles should ideally specify “open spoilers” or “no spoilers” or “open spoilers after page 2” or something like that. As with TV shows, this applies to the things that you actually saw on screen in the movie, not inside information you might have from other sources. Basically, use common sense. If the thread was started before the movie, and generally contains people talking about how excited they are to see the movie, don’t immediately jump in and post, with no spoiler box, “hey, the butler did it!”. Similarly, once people are openly discussing what happened in the movie, don’t worry to yourself “uh oh, I’m discussing openly what happened in the movie, just like those people were, but I’d better spoiler box my entire post anyhow just in case”.
-For older movies, or in threads with no guidelines in the title, there’s again no one clear rule. Should we assume that everyone has seen The Dark Knight? What about Batman Begins? What about Tim Burton’s Batman from 1989 (or whenever)? I’d say that the older the movie, and the less important the spoiled plot point, the less important it is to use a spoiler box. But remember, there are people reading the dope right now who are 16 years old, who were 3 years old when The Usual Suspects (just to pick a random example) came out, and thus almost certainly didn’t see it in theaters. Have they seen it on DVD since then? Well, they might have. But then again, they might not have. So be courteous and thoughtful.
A few other general thoughts:
-The cardinal rule of using spoiler boxes is to make it clear, OUTSIDE the spoiler box, why the spoiler box is there. Is it there because you’ve already seen next week’s episode? Because you have seen the movie under discussion early? Because you read an article? Because you heard some rumors? Because you watched previews? The whole point of a spoiler box is that it’s something which some people will want to read and others won’t. It’s useless if people don’t have enough information to make that decision.
-Even if you don’t want to use spoiler boxes, it’s entirely possible to order your thoughts such that someone who doesn’t want to be spoiled will have a chance to skip ahead. Put the key spoiled information in the second sentence of the paragraph, with some warning that it is coming.
-There are still some tricky corner cases. For instance, while watching the HBO docudrama Generation Kill, I commented that I wondered how realistic one of the portrayals (by an actor, of a real life person) was, and someone else said “oh, I saw an interview with the real guy on HBO.com” (or something like that). Which, of course, meant that I suddenly knew that that soldier would survive throughout the miniseries. Should that have been spoiler boxed? Maybe something like “Concerning the real life fate of Soldier Bob, … [spoilers]”? While the show Deadwood was airing, if people had historical knowledge of what happened to the real city of Deadwood, would that count as spoilers for the show?
I agree in principle with the OP. Spoiler boxes should be used for actual spoilers, not for things like swear words or punchlines to jokes or any other shit.
What about stuff that is available to different parts of the world at different times (e.g.: the current incarnation of Doctor Who)?
I have an iPod Touch, and this bugs me too. It’s a fairly minor issue, but it does grate. It’s just here, though, because I am able to read spoiler boxes on the other message board I read frequently (Something Awful). Tapping the veeery edge of the spoiler box highlights the text.
I think for movies the use of spoiler boxes should end when the movie goes off new rentals at the movie store. If you still haven’t seen it six months after it came out, tough nouggies. At some point someone will leak that DARTH VADER IS LUKE’S DAD!!1!!! and if you don’t want to get spoilered, go rent the damned movie.
Oh, most certainly. I truncated my original post to draw to light the essence of the spoiler box’s purpose - to spoil information the general public does not reasonably have access to (not to mention the fact that I typed it on my phone, and didn’t know how long I’d have before I timed out). There are always exceptions - but using just a small bit of common sense can easily dictate 98% of spoiler box use (and eliminate probably about 80% of unnecessary use).
There have been regular TV show threads that develop their own spoiler box rules, and the person that starts the weekly threads usually posts them in the beginning to avoid confusion. And that works PERFECTLY. And they do so for a reason - people have, in the past, failed to engage their use of common sense and used spoiler boxes when completely unnecessary, creating confusion (and possibly anger at actually spoiling something for someone because they diluted the spoiler box’s value to such an extent as to make them meaningless).
I love your addendums, but the problem always centers around the fact that someone is going to not follow the suggestion of “open spoilers”, becoming a Poster A. Always. And whenever that happens, the odds of Poster B being spoiled by Poster D because of a point of confusion increases. And I don’t want anyone to go on a murderous rampage. (And more realistically/importantly, I want to read what you have to say, and I want you to communicate more effectively with everyone on the board.)
And don’t get me started on people whose post is nothing BUT a spoiler box, giving absolutely no indication of what it contains, the source of the information, or any other sort of warning. I mean, who do they expect is going to click on it?!
This should be simply covered in the thread title. If it says “Doctor Who 10/20/08 {spoilers}” then I’m not going into it because I haven’t seen it. Plain and simple. For shows that are on a few weeks delay, so that, say, the UK is getting Doctor Who S5E3 the same week I’m getting Doctor Who S5E1, then maybe indicated the episode in the title. But spoiler boxes aren’t necessary to convey that information, right?
I dunno. In a thread like “great plot twists you didn’t see coming” I’d have to resign myself to waiting until I got near my PC to read it, because that thread is going to (and should) be chock full of spoiler boxes.
This needs to be reiterated again, it is so important. Picture yourself in the middle of a discussion of your favorite television show. You’re happily reading along, and you come across this post (pretend the following is an individual post):
Munch
guest
This is either a big giant spoiler for your favorite television show that has now ruined your entire television watching experience, or it’s common knowledge that was already said in the post above this. Either way, how the fuck would you have known what’s in here without me giving at least SOME indication before the spoiler box what’s inside, like I do in the examples below?
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So why’d you click the above? I didn’t tell you what was in it. It could have been anything. It could have been the secret ending to “Battlestar Galactica”, it could have been instructions on how to use a toothpick. You don’t know. HERE is what you need to do:
Munch
guest
I kidnapped Ronald Moore last weekend and made him watch the first season of “Star Trek: Vogager” five times in a row before he recapped the final (half) season of Battlestar. Here it is:
Boxey comes back, marries the hybrid baby who then gives birth to a flying motorcycle. They raise a family, start up a cattle ranch, and Boxey proceeds to watch a series of wives die from various maladies like rickets, scurvy and the clap over the course of the next 400 episodes.
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See? Crisis averted.