I think the “pretend the books don’t exist” edict is the way to go, otherwise I believe it is a slippery slope.
Now I’m going to point out the latest example, not because I’m upset by it, but just to use as a case-in-point:
Yes, it’s very minor and nothing to really get riled up about, but it’s a good example of how easy it is to unintentionally let spoilers slip when not following the “pretend the books don’t exist” rule. In this case, a comparison of how Tengu pictured a character from the book to how they appeared in the show led to us prematurely knowing the name and the apparent continuity of this new character.
This time, no harm, no foul. But I think the spoilers will be constant if people don’t pretend the books don’t exist. Usually, they’ll probably be minor like this one, but if it continues unabated, the occasional whopper is bound to slip out periodically.
In my opinion, even though there is an ongoing “open spoiler” thread for the book readers, I think there should be two threads for each episode. The strict PTBDE thread where there should be no spoilers and no references to the book at all, and another thread for the book readers, where they can post whatever they want and refer to the books as often as they like.
For obvious reasons, I haven’t read the ongoing “open spoiler” thread, so I don’t know how things are in there. But it just seems to me that the book readers (and indirectly, the non-book readers) might benefit from having an episodic spoiler thread. The ongoing spoiler thread could go on without being constrained to talking about specific episodes, and then with an episodic spoiler thread, there will be a better outlet for the sort of comments inappropriate for the “no books” thread.