I constantly see people jumping on other people in this forum for either not including "spoiler" in their subject line or for listing a subject line that "spoils" things. The reasoning behind this is because some people want to remain spoiler free. Think about it, would someone who wanted to remain spoiler free visit a site like this on a regular basis? More than anything, I think most of us come here to find out what is about to happen because we are all just too eager until the next eppy. Yeah, it's nice to talk about past episodes but knowing what's coming is more exciting than rehashing the past. Just my opinion. I look forward to hearing all of yours.

-- Linda (l.brown@mindspring.com), November 15, 2000

Answers

Linda, I wasn't trying to be mean to T Lem in his or thread about Alex Kingston when I told him about that. I told him because when I didn't put spoiler as part of a heading I got blasted for it and a few nasty e-mails about it. So I told him that so the same wouldn't happen to him.

-- Cammie (rmaelhorn@home.com), November 15, 2000.

I disagree. There are a lot of people on the newsgroup and, I assume, here too, who do not want to be "spoiled." Sure, spoilers and predictions for upcoming episodes are part of the discussions that take place here, but we're also in the middle of a new season. All kinds of things worth discussing have already happened. A new discussion about, say, "Love's Labor's Lost" might be considered "rehashing the past." A discussion about "Flight of Fancy" isn't.

I've read the spoilers through a certain point and am trying not to see any more. It certainly is exciting to find out what's going to happen, but some people find it more exciting to wait and be surprised. The problem is that the decision only works one way: once you know, you know. Spoiler space is important because it lets people make the decision for themselves. And all it requires is a few blank lines and a little common sense.

I don't mind that there are so many spoilers floating around - JLS is wonderful to give us so many juicy details, and is always careful to label them as such. What I do mind is when others take that same information and treats it as public knowledge. As far as I'm concerned, you can talk about spoilers as much as you want. Just make sure you let people know that's what you're doing.

-- Julia (dauphine01@yahoo.com), November 15, 2000.

BTW, who is JLS? Technically, I would prefer to not know what's going to happen. I've decided several times to not look at SPOILERS. However, I find myself compelled to read them anyway. :)

-- carol b (Shadek98@aol.com), November 15, 2000.

Fifth, please mark spoiler threads appropriately. Try not to introduce them into pre-existing threads, but if you really have to, remember that traditional Usenet spoiler space doesn't apply since most people will be reading your post with a modern Web browser running at high resolution and will be able to see a good chunk of lines. So it's probably better that you just initiate a new thread instead.

I think that statement (taken from a policy post dating back to February of this year) pretty much sums it up, and indicates my position on the subject. People want to stay "clean" and still be able to interact; I don't see why we can't be nice to them, considering this particular issue had been beaten to death on various Usenet newsgroups long before most people got on-line or even knew what the Internet was (spoiler etiquette on the net dates back to at least 1985, which is when I started reading Usenet). The fact that it was more or less settled almost 15 years ago would probably indicate that it's a net-wide convention by now, and I wish people would have more regard for these kinds of things..

-- Mike Sugimoto (phloem@fumbling.com), November 16, 2000.

I agree with Mike. If people don't want to see spoilers then we should respect that. (I happen to LOVE spoilers) But I can see in some instances where I wouldn't want to look. Like when the "BIG SECRET EPISODE" of last sweeps in Feb. ("BSMH" & "AITF")was going to happen, I steared clear of this site and others for a whole month. I wanted to be totally surprised! And I was!

-- Stephanie (ERGirl22@aol.com), November 16, 2000.

I don't come here for spoilers. I hate them. I didn't even know that Kellie Martin was leaving the show, and it made for some very interesting viewing. I don't even watch the next week's promo after the show, and if an ER commercial comes on, I hit "mute" and turn my head. I come here to see what people are saying about the last show, not so people can ruin my surprise, shock, enjoyment, et cetera.

-- Annie (GoldenLaur@aol.com), November 16, 2000.

Over at the mighty big tv board they are able to cover up the spoiler and if you want to read the spoiler, you hightlight(swept) the section containing the spoiler with your mouse cursor. I don't know how that works but it would nice if we could do that here too, since some people don't want to know spoilers.

-- anna (nc3@postmark.net), November 16, 2000.

Well, there is a way to do it like that (having not ever been to Mighty Big TV, I don't know exactly how), but:

• It requires people who post to have a decent understanding of HTML (most don't);
• People have to remember to close their tags;
• It won't work for people who have their browsers set to non-default colors;
• It doesn't work for people who've signed up for the e-mailed digests/posts.

(Highlight the above section for my reasoning.)

It's just easier if we all practice a bit more discretion.

-- Mike Sugimoto (phloem@fumbling.com), November 16, 2000.

Waaaaaaay Cool Mike, if you ever teach a class on this let me know...I'm there!

-- Deb (KHege@AOL.com), November 17, 2000.

Waaaaaayyyyyyyyy too cool. I want to learn how to do that but I don't even know what HTML is LOL :o) I don't even visit this site until AFTER i have seen the episode. That way i'm suprised with the epi and I get to express my shock/dismay/anger/elation/etc and read what other ppl thought of the episode. I live on the west coast and if I came on here early I would be able to go to bed and never have to watch an epi. *GASP* I don't think I could EVER do that ;)

-- Heather (charliegirll@hotmail.com), November 17, 2000.

In my travels across the network, I've only ever found one truly great introduction to HTML, which has everything to do with making Web pages that don't suck and won't break other people's browsers. I don't think you'll find anything of great value there, though (but do read, there are lots of nice photographs, and the author is the guy who makes all of this possible).

If you do a "View Source" on this page, you'll see all the markup that goes in; most of it is machine-inserted, but some of it (including the stuff that's in my posts) is inserted by hand. Smart posters have been making use of it here for a while; not-so-smart posters have also used in the past and done things like forgotten to close tags in their posts so everything below them becomes bold, underlined, italicized, blinking (god forbid), whatever.

Basically, for spoiler concealment, the trick is to set the color of the text to the same color as the background of the page. You can do this by encapsulating text inside FONT definition elements and providing user cues to people who might want to read stuff. I'm going to leave actual implementation as an exercise to the reader, but once again, I'm going to say that you shouldn't be playing around with HTML here unless you really know what you're doing, and even then you shold give it some more thought. Post in HTML and screw up and I might hand correct the messed-up elements; more likely, I'll just delete the offending post outright.

And I still think that everyone exercising a little more care in dealing with spoilers is better than any kind of technical solution that depends on people to remember to do complicated tricks. If you don't understand how HTML works and what it all means, you're essentially relying on memorization; far better for you to memorize that "oh yeah, I should start a new thread and let people know in the subject that this is a spoiler if I want to talk about upcoming stuff."

-- Mike Sugimoto (phloem@fumbling.com), November 17, 2000.

Just posting to see if this HTML thing works for me...I assume you just need to change the font color to white? If not, I guess I'm stupid.

Highlight between the stars *** Episode #10 is called "Piece Of Mind" and I'll start another thread with spoilers. ***

Don't laugh at me if that didn't work. :-)

-- JLS (ewwhatevr@aol.com), November 17, 2000.

I didn't even realize that you could add posts with Hypertext here. I guess I don't ask enough questions. That's ok. My multimedia design teacher has a design mantra that fits with designing web pages too, and I think Mike subscribes to it. "Just because you could, doesn't mean you should." I fancy myself reasonably knowledgable about HTML, but I think I'll stick to this method of posting to be safe and not upset the apple cart here. Bells and whistles are well and good, but you know what they say about "a little knowledge."

-- S. Trelles (trelles@ix.netcom.com), November 17, 2000.

I have a pretty good working knowledge of HTML, but that doesn't mean I don't screw it up occasionally, such as when I'm sleep deprived. Once I did try to italicize a word here on Mike's board, but I left out the slash in the closing tag and of course the entire remainder of the page got italicized. *blush* Mike tacitly fixed it without comment, but boy did I feel chastised anyway. :)

That's one reason I don't mess with HTML here much. Another is that it's not my board, and I know without even asking that Mike wouldn't want us fooling around making rainbow-colored text and all manner of other goofiness.

BTW, I also discovered that CSS also works on greenspun.com discussion boards like this. Again, I don't need to ask if it's OK to do here. :) I just go on the assumtion that Mike wants it as clean and simple as possible.

-- Cecelia (evilstoat@hotmail.com), November 17, 2000.

Mike, thanks for the mini lesson. I'm not very computer literate so all the tips I can get is great. I use a MAC at work (sometimes it seems as if it's from 1982...obivously I'm not a great MAC supporter) and I have to use Page Source (I'm not sure if there is even a difference) to see all the text. However, I hope that people will not start doing all sorts of crazy stuff with their posts. One the reason's I like this board is because it isn't cluttered up with graphics. Anyway thanks for the lesson.

-- Emma (webbef@hotmail.com), November 17, 2000.