Spoiler Forum vs. Spoiler Text

With the podcast, it’s easy: we don’t discuss spoilers. On the blog we simply adopted the same concept, but here on the forum, handling spoilers is a much more complex issue – at least in my mind.

We’d like you to remain free to have fun and take the forum in whatever direction you want, but at the same time we’d like to maintain an environment friendly to those who wish to remain spoiler-free in discussing the latest sci-fi. (Maybe one of the reasons this is so important to me is that I totally straddle the line, sometimes wanting to remain “virgin” for the upcoming show/game/etc. and sometimes living spoilers-be-damned.)

So here is our current thinking: we could create a Spoilers forum specifically for posting this kind of information. Or we could add spoiler text and ban the posting of spoilers in thread titles. Or both.

What do you think? Or do you have a better idea altogether?

Of the two, I think I’d prefer spoiler text (the kind where you have to highlight it to read it.) It would have to be pretty obvious in the interface how to create it, though. Is it even possible with the ‘text box’ input option?

The separate forum seems an easy way to proceed. Spoiler text might work but that might require some tinkering with vBulletin.

Spoilers creep into any discussion. I’m thinking it’ll be easiest for people to just keep them “highlighted” and then if you feel you NEED to read a spoiler to continue a conversation then you can.

A spoiler forum has the risk of being very hard to manage.

Rorlins

A seperate spoiler forum seems like it would be a bit difficult, as once you have something in your head, and you use it as common knowledge, it’s hard to remove all traces of the knowledge from discussions elsewhere

for example if somebody frequented the spoiler area often and was an active participant in the discussion there. Once that same person went to another area of the boards and posted in the “non-spoiler” BSG discussion area, I could forsee alot of incidents where the person would include things in their post that they don’t really think about, but end up referencing a spoiler.

If a spoiler prevention must be implemented i’d think people manually heading all their spoilers would be more effective because it maintains the general persons vigilance against spoilers, as opposed to letting their guard down. However be warned, if somebody is not able to, or chooses not to watch a specific episode, yet decides to browse the forums, accidental spoilers will occur. Even though I feel that people should be responsible for their own curiosity, some people still rely on others to safeguard them instead, and complain when they don’t =(

text. the {spoiler} {/spoiler} tags are easy to use and then you don’t have to post in 2 threads just to throw in a spoiler. and once again, i’m a big fan of the {youtube} {/youtube} embedding too

OK, here’s what I’m going to do for now:

First, I’ve added a spoiler text tag that works via highlighting as you’d expect. I’m also going to craft a post later today that lays out the rules banning the placing of spoilers in post topics.

I think I’ll bend the “spoiler forum” idea into this: when new episodes resume, we’ll post a thread with each podcast anyway that’ll follow the rules of the podcast – i.e. you can talk about the just-broadcast episode. That way everyone there can discuss what we all just saw without spoiling it for people in other forums.

I’m still going to watch the “What’s a Spoiler?” thread because we need a better definition for “spoiler,” and I think we’re starting to get close to one.

PS: I also enabled the YouTube BB code.

You rock!
[spoiler] you really do! [/spoiler]

this video may be considered a spoiler:

//youtu.be/YMaBSCaLcB0

I think it’s a good compromise.

I just found out that when you get an email notification about a new post in a thread that you’ve subscribed to, and that post contains spoiler tags, then what’s in between the spoiler tags is NOT blanked out in the notification email, but it’s readable in the clear. I think this should be mended.

OK, how good are you at programming?

I can’t believe you responded to a half-year old post.

That’s weird. it showed up as a ‘new post.’

Solai must be mucking about.

Scratch that, I forgot that this is a poll thread.

Isn’t every thread by now? IYKWIM!

Actually on that note, what up with threads appearing that they have new posts if someone just votes in the poll. It’s kind of annoying, I’ve never seen it in any other VB forum.

Really? That’s encouraging. We’ll have to poke around and see if there’s something we can turn off.

Isn’t the purpose of poking around that you find something to turn on?

Killing the it’s-new-every-time-someone-votes switch would be a definite turn on for me.

IYKWIM

That is why we miss you around here, my friend.

I just done a test on another VB forum. I voted on a poll and it didn’t move to the top or as far as I can tell indicate a new post. How that’s achieved I have no idea.