We’ve got a thread where folks are speculating about the next Harry Potter book. No one has any advance information, no one has read the book yet, but people are just tossing out ideas.
The mods were asked to put a “spoilers” warning in the thread title. We’re happy to comply, but I want to raise the discussion of whether speculations are really “spoilers”? I’d like your input.
Although I haven’t read the thread, I would assume that any speculation regarding the last book is going to include spoilers from the previous books. In that case, I think Spoilers is appropriate.
Thank you for starting this thread. Speculation is not spoilers. I also think there’s needs to be a statute of limitations on how long we have to wait before we can discuss something without spoiler boxes.
The gentlepersons rule we’ve been using in the BSG threads is that anything “official”–ie from the writers, actors, etc in interviews, podcasts, bonus internet scenes or whatever, should be considered spoiler material and boxed until the actual episode has aired. Anything that is just fan-rumor, or personal opinion is not boxed. Thus those threads always contain a mix of spoilers & speculation, and have the spoiler tag in the title.
Even if a thread is tagged “speculation” in the title, I think there’s a good chance that it will contain spoilers as soon as there are spoilers to be had. At least in the BSG threads, people usually are very considerate about such things, and use the boxes as needed. To a certain extent, you can rely on the fanbase to police themselves. To some extent, adding “spoiler*” to the title is almost redundant.
*I think you should add “Don Jardine” to the title, just to confuse people. 
I’m inclined to think that if a thread is going to be focused on speculation, labeling it “speculation” makes more sense than labeling it “spoilers”. I’m not convinced that there should be any sort of statute of limitations on when one no longer needs spoiler boxes, because I think that is very dependent on the type of thread/discussion, not the length of time the movie/book/etc. has been out. There are times when I do think that persons not wanting to be exposed to spoilers for a particular work would be better off just staying out of threads that discuss it.
We’ve not put a statute of limitations on Spoilers for a variety of reasons:
(1) When it comes to TV shows, we have an international readership: if the Brits reveal endings to DR WHO episodes when they see them, the Americans won’t see those episodes until many (many!) months later. So, just because it was shown two weeks ago in your country doesn’t mean everyone has seen it.
(2) People do tape or TiVo things to watch later, so the date something is aired is not necessarily any indication of when people might watch it.
(3) For movies, people do miss the first run and wait to watch at the cheap theatres on second run. Or wait until it comes out on DVD. And, again, the international release can be later than the local release.
So, we’ve set the standard as “Don’t ruin it for people watching for the first time” and we recognize that the first time can be months or years later. At the same time, of course, we strongly urge those who don’t want anything spoiler to NOT read the threads about that show/movie. Hence, the need for clear thread titles. People who don’t want spoilers should take some responsibility on their own to avoid threads where spoilers might lurk.
I think it is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer 
that a “Harry Potter Ending” thread will include material up to and including book 6 and would not read the thread until I had read book 6 (I myself waited for the paperback and so stayed out of book 6 threads for a while).
Now if there was some exerpts form book 7 on JKR’s or the publisher’s website, any discussion of that material could be tagged, because peopla may want to read the book fresh.
Brian
Speculation in and of itself is not a spoiler. Although a lot of speculations (like in my thread about Snape) will include information that would be spoilers if you hadn’t seen the most recent episode/read the latest book etc. Probably better to be safe than sorry.
I have to agree with this. Anything that isn’t actual Book 7 material is okay, in that thread. If you haven’t read Book 6 yet, and you’re reading speculations about how Book 7 ends, you’re basically saying you want spoilers. Any kind of speculation is going to be based on previous incidents, so you should assume that someone will posit, say, “I think Tarzan will be helping Harry a lot. He was really mad when Malfoy stole his biplane*.” If you didn’t read Book 6 and know that Malfoy stole the biplane, you shouldn’t really be reading the thread in the first place.
*No, that doesn’t really happen.
Label it “Spoilers for previous HP books” or something. Speculation is not spoilers. Protecting against spoilers I understand, but I don’t see any point is protecting against what some yutz on the internet thinks will happen.