Still a Work in Progress: Welcome to the Community Forum!

I agree, I love Kate dearly, but she's become an incredibly absentee mother.

 

Her avatar makes me all tingly.

 

I sent this to comms, but I'll post it here too, just to see if anybody else is getting this: My screen froze on me and I got a message saying "theforce.net isn't responding do to a long - running script."

 

No.

 

Oh I'm not denying that. Life has gotten crazee over the last year. I'm not posting nearly as much.

 

Y'argh I be demandin' a piratey banner!

 

Dislike. DISLIKE.

 

Community Spoiler Policy

Threads discussing television shows, movies, etc, will fall under a default Highlight-To-Read/Spoiler Tag policy. The duration of the spoiler period depends on the media being discussed:

- TV SHOWS: Spoilers must be kept between spoiler tags for two days after the first airing.
- COMICS: Spoilers must be kept between spoiler tags for a week after a comic's release.
- MOVIES: Spoilers must be kept between spoiler tags for two weeks after a movie's release.
- BOOKS: Spoilers must be kept between spoiler tags for a month after a book's release.

Specific threads --upon the agreement of the users posting in that thread or the moderating team-- can have house rules that differ from the general spoiler policy. These "house rules" will be put in the thread title and will be visible in the thread's first post.

Should a thread author wish to create a non-spoiler thread (one that prohibits all spoiler discussion), they may PM a forum moderator and present the reasons behind wanting a spoiler free thread (those reasons should be more detailed than "I want it to be spoiler free". The Community mods will discuss these "petitions" on a case-by-case basis and allow individual spoiler and non-spoiler threads based on the potential popularity of the topic and the need to establish two separate threads.

All spoilers that violate this policy will be edited, and those who post them might end up facing a warning or ban. The seriousness of the spoiler will determine the severity of the action; posting generally harmless material such as casting rumors will not be cause for modding, while spoiling a plot twist or an ending will probably cause a vacation from the boards. Threads with house spoiler rules may sometimes operate under more severe restrictions than threads operating under the general spoiler policy. In case of doubt, use your common sense and err on the side of caution.

 

So would this mean we would have to use the spoiler tags

Spoiler

on everything

for each format's specified length of time? Geniunely curious.

 

has this been a big problem lately?

 

The only instance I can think of to reference is the Game of Thrones thread. We had a couple moments where people unknowingly posted a spoiler from the book in the tv thread without even thinking about it.

 

Banned for posting a spoiler.... seriously?

Where is this listed in the TOS... or are you making **** up on the cuff?

Does this really need to be stickied? I mean, is this really a forum-wide issue? Couldn't you just PM a few people?

 

You are free to use those tags if you wish. I would hope that no one would go into a thread that says "spoilers" and hope to remain unspoiled, though. Just keep the spoilers within marked threads, and everything should be fine.

tom Not particularly, as PK said, but we need to have a policy.

harpuah Yes, if people go around spoiling people who are intending to remain unspoiled, we will edit and/or ban. I hope it never happens. For now, the thread is going up as a sticky for easy reference; whether it will always be a sticky or whether it'll be part of a larger "Community Policy" thread remains to be seen.

 

So... because of one instance of a spoiler being accidentally posted and read, we need a policy, and we need to threaten people with warnings and bans? Seems like a knee-jerk reaction, and a bit excessive.

 

My guess is the ban threat would be for trolls who just don't care who they spoil (I've dealt with them on other forums with clueless or trollish fanbrats posting unmarked Torchwood: Children of Earth spoilers to the point that one would put the BIG day four spoiler in the subject thread of their post when Children of Earth was airing).

And this is similar to the spoiler policy I saw on the Sci - Fi forums when they were active here.

 

So... when are the community mods going to be pruned, so that there aren't so many?

I get it, Juliet... I've encountered the same thing in other places, but we've never really had an issue with that sort of thing here. It just seems a bit insane to come up with a policy and threaten bans because of one instance.

 

harpuah, Juliet316 is correct on both counts. If it's a genuine mistake, we'll edit to prevent those who don't wish to be spoiled from seeing. If someone trolls with them, they'll get a ban. I'm not sure of the details of the JCC's spoiler policy, but SFF had one. It's not a knee-jerk reaction to anything--we haven't had a specific instance lately--but with the inclusion of media-heavy forums, we think it's a good idea.

 

Who is this "we"?

 

The Community mods. I didn't post this policy on my own or import it from another forum; we did talk about it first.

 

On the whole I don't much care. I mean, I don't see why someone would read a thread discussing a book or movie or whatever that's been released and then complain about being spoiled. Or is this more for the "Bruce Willis is dead" posts in the middle of a discussion about Die Hard? But this really seems like the sort of thing that could have benefited from actual discussion with the Community at large and what we wanted. Especially because this seems like such a minor issue that a full on policy hardly seems necessary.

Edit: The more I think about it, I just find this to be a thoroughly confusing policy. I watched Parks and Rec on Thursday night. Does the policy mean I can only discuss it in a specifically designated Parks and Rec Spoiler thread and any discussion of it in a Parks and Rec thread not specifically for spoilers will forever be a week behind? Isn't the end result of this just going to be one Spoiler and one non-Spoiler thread for every TV show, movie, book, or comic that people want to discuss?

Amazing.

 

Yeah, I mean did you guys mean to say "Spoilers must be kept in a spoiler tag" instead of thread? Like, we have one Walking Dead thread but discussions on the most recent episode should mainly be used with spoiler tags in the first week?

 

I'm looking forward to the 3rd Hobbit movie's release in 2013 or 2014 so I can discuss plot points without fear of bannage.

 

There was a spoiler policy in JCC before. It was vague and awfully defined because it was spread through three different threads but yes, people got banned for spoiling things before (you know who you are, ***hole).