Announcement: Spoilers: How and when to use them

A new announcement has been posted. This is the official discussion thread for the announcement.

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There have been a few queries/complaints recently regarding spoilers so I decided to write up something to work as a general guideline.

General Information
- Spoiler: Any and all content that was NOT announced/shown off by the creating company to the public prior to release.
- Announced information: Any and all content that WAS announced/shown off to the public by the creating company prior to release.
- Creating company: The company and staff credited for the creation of the media. Not to be confused with rumours and/or leaked information.
- Announced information can be in the title of a thread. Spoilers should NEVER be in the title of a thread.
- Marked Spoiler: A spoiler found in the spoiler tags, eg: (SPOILER)like this
- Unmarked Spoiler: A spoiler written in plain view without being initially 'hidden' by spoiler tags.
- Thread Title Spoiler Warning: A warning in the title of a thread which states that the thread contains spoilers. When this is done, any spoiler relevant to the thread/forum title's stated media are considered "fair game" to be unmarked.

Guidelines
Because of the different nature of various media, I've broken this down to make it a bit clearer.

Film
- If the film is not yet released, mark spoilers.
- If the film is released and the film's name is in the title of the thread, spoilers should be assumed to be within the content of the thread.
- If the film is released and the film's name is NOT in the title of the thread, mark spoilers.

Book
- If the book is not yet published, mark spoilers.
- If the book is published and the book's name is in the title of the thread, spoilers should be assumed to be within the content of the thread.
- If the book is published and the book's name is NOT in the title of the thread, mark spoilers.

TV Series
- If the episode has not yet aired, mark spoilers.
- If the episode has aired and the TV series' name is in the title of the thread, spoilers should be assumed to be within the content of the thread.
- If the episode has aired and the TV series' name is NOT in the title of the thread, mark spoilers.

Video Games
We have to be more careful with this content as it is the primary content of the website and thus generates more particular threads rather than generic "Game of Thrones" or "Harry Potter" threads.
- If the game has not yet been released, mark spoilers.
- If the game has been released within the last year, mark spoilers.
- If the game has been released for over a year and the game's name is in the title of the thread and/or forum, spoilers should be assumed to be within the content of the thread. However, for the sake of politeness towards people who are new to the game, it is still encouraged to mark notable spoilers where they are not the major topic at hand because dammit, it's just a nice thing to do.

Using Spoiler Tags
Typing something like this...

PHP Code:

[spoiler]This is a marked spoiler[/spoiler]

Results in this...
(SPOILER)This is a marked spoiler

Typing something like this...

PHP Code:

[spoiler="Look, I changed the clickable bit to say something else"]This is also a marked spoiler[/spoiler]

Results in this...
Look, I changed the clickable bit to say something elseThis is also a marked spoiler

Thread Title Spoiler Warnings

Spoilers can be marked in the title of a thread and that covers an entire thread. HOWEVER, we should be careful with that. Let's use the Game of Thrones example.

Thread Title: Game of Thrones (contains unmarked aired TV spoilers)

This is specific. It contains spoilers that will be unmarked. These spoilers will spoil the Game of Thrones TV episodes which have aired. It will NOT spoil book content, it will NOT spoil unaired content, it will NOT spoil content for whatever other TV shows.

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Then you could go into an FFXV forum a month after release and see a thread such as this...

Thread Title: What did you think of the game? (SPOILERS!)

This is not specific, but it doesn't need to be. Clearly, the unmarked spoilers will relate to the entirety of the FFXV game.

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Let's find a bad example.

Thread Title: Your favourite film! SPOILERS!!!

This doesn't clarify which film the unmarked spoilers will be for. Not good enough - they'll have to specify the title of the film. Since this is about an unknown group of films, the spoilers will simply have to be marked in the thread.

One last thing
There are some things which, while technically spoilers, are such common knowledge that they have become somewhat viral in their own right, and may be allowed to be posted unmarked in any threads. Examples: Aeris dies, Mufasa dies, Bruce Willis is dead, the Titanic sinks, Vader is Luke's father, Firefly never gets a second season, etc. Deciding where that line is drawn is down to the moderation team - when in doubt, ask a moderator or simply mark your spoilers anyway just to be on the safe side.

Moved from the Private Feedback Forum (fun fact: all announcements get a thread automatically generated there) because I feel it's worth having people be able to reply to it if they want any clarification etc.

So if there is a thread, for example, called "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" or "House of Cards Series 4" And no mention of there being spoilers in the thread title it's still okay to post spoilers in those threads?

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Originally Posted by Pheesh

So if there is a thread, for example, called "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" or "House of Cards Series 4" And no mention of there being spoilers in the thread title it's still okay to post spoilers in those threads?

If there is a thread called "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and it has been released (obviously it has) then you can post spoilers in the thread. If people are going to be reading a thread titled "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" after the date of it's release then it can generally be assumed that the posts in the thread will be discussing things that are within the film.

If there is a thread called "House of Cards Season 4" then it can generally be assumed that the posts in the thread will be discussing things that are within aired episodes.

Essentially if you are not wanting an episode or film to be spoiled you probably shouldn't be reading a thread where people will be discussing that episode/film after the episode/film has been aired/released. To use Deadpool as an example, the moment the film had been released I stopped reading the Deadpool thread because I didn't want anything spoiled for me. To use Game of Thrones as an example for a TV series, I never read the GoT thread between the time of airing of an episode in the US and the time that I watch said episode here in the UK.

If you wanted to make a thread in which people are to discuss something without spoilers after the time of release, you could make a notice in the thread title saying "no spoilers please!" or something to that effect.

Can we make a rule or just acknowledge that if you're discussing a specific thing and some one brings up related thing, you have to mark it?

For example, if I'm reading threads in the FFIV forum and someone says brings up (SPOILER) the trope of ghosts and a random poster is like "oh yeah, square enix reused that in FFX when (SPOILER) you discover Auron is a ghost

You see what I mean? If you're drawing a parallel to a related piece of media but the topic isn't about that piece of media, you should mark spoilers. IMHO.

That's essentially how it works. If the thread was not in the FFX forum and FFX was not in the title of the thread (I don't imagine it would have been in your example), then FFX spoilers should be marked.