All NSA residents please read and post: Recommendations for TFN spoiler guidelines needed

Those of you who haven't seen it yet, please check out this thread in Comms. Be warned, however, that it does contain some spoilers. You can probably skip over those posts though and get the jist of what is going on.

The issue is the amount of "spoilerish" information that TFN places in the titles of its Spy Reports (any of us can easily see these titles, be they on the TFN mainpage or in the "Latest Headlines" blurb at the bottom of every page on the JC). Sometimes, unfortunately, the title can reveal too much information, inadvertantly spoiling us. Many of you have actually brought up this issue before. Unfortunately, it has never really been fully resolved. I hope this thread rectifies that.

I hope this thread will allow us to come up with some ideas, agree on some guidelines and, ultimately, make this place much easier on us non-spoiled folk. What we decide upon in this thread will be forwarded to the owners/operators of TFN in the form of a proposal which we will insist upon enforcing.

What we need are some clear-cut guidelines by which TFN staff can easily abide. As we make up a good percentage of TFN readership, our views are important and can influence the "higher-ups". What I want us, the people of NS, to decide upon is things like:
* the amount of information that can be present in a title
* whether or not an "ambiguous" title is safe enough for us
etc, etc.

Any thoughts and opinions would be much appreciated

[Thanks go out to DLM for the idea ]

 

Great idea on getting input from the rank and file, stinky.
We can work though this together like we've always done in the past.

 

The problem with such headlines is not that they contain blatant spoilers, but that the title of the article gives enough information that any Star Wars fanatic with half a brain will be able to figure out what the spoiler is. This has been the case in the past as well. I went spoiler for AOTC, so I highlighted all the invisible text I could find, but many times I already had good idea as to what I would find because of the title above the article. I was very rarely wrong.
While it is true that being spoiled is a risk that we take by looking at Star Wars sites on the Net, it is possible for a site to be more discrete about such things. If TFN is going to try to appease those of us that do not wish to know plot details of Episode III, the only headlines that would be vague enough to not give away anything indirectly would be something like "New Planet Revealed" or "New Plot info (SPOILERS)." The problem is that such things are not very exciting, and like most other sites, TFN is always trying to find more readers.

 

Leading up to Episode 1 and Episode 2, it has always been TFN's style to have sexy headlines attached to it's Spy Reports.

After reading Fing's suggestion perhaps the spy reports could be toned down a bit to a description.

 

Essentially, I do not see why the TFN headlines need any other clarification than the two words: Spoiler Report. That would be sufficient. The spoiler folk would go to the main site and highlight away, while we could easily avoid gaining any new information. Unfortunately, I do not believe that this proposal would fly, so some sort of guideline system is needed.

We need to iron out these types of details prior to the release of the really big spoilers. Please, everyone, reply with any thoughts that you may have. There are no bad answers here....


EDIT: Yes, as stinrab said in his edit, be sure to thank Mara for this thread. Moderator Emeritus or not, Mara continues to work hard for us all.






Mace Windy,
win or lose, eagles fan for life!

 

But wouldn't describing the spy report be a spoiler?

How about this as a definition?
Spoiler: 1) Any item that directly reveals information regarding plot, stetting, creature or vehicle designs 2) Any item that contains hints that can lead a reasonable person to a correct conclusion about such information.

This would allow titles like "New Creature" but not something like "Little. Green. Lightsaber." which was a headline during the filming of AOTC which all but told everyone reading it that Yoda would be shown with a lightsaber.

 

A good suggestion would be to simply label them with the date like "Spy Report 02/20/03", and possibly maybe even a scale depending on how big the rumor/report is like "Spy Report: 02/20/03 rating: 5" with 5 being a major scoop or spoiler and 1 being all around basic news.

 

I don't know where exactly you are going with that Fingorfin, but I was thinking more along the lines of BOM. Why do the reports need to be titled at all?

Although, as you say, if the reports absolutely need a title (which I am sure that they will insist that they do) your idea seems to be more along the lines of something that would work. It certainly would be an improvement.





Mace Windy,
win or lose, eagles fan for life!

 

In my opinion, the titles can never be too vague. If the title is just "Spy Report", sure, it isn't specific. However, I think that most of those who would care about the Spy Report are the same people who would highlight it, regardless of what the title was.

On the other hand, titles can be too specific. The "Little. Green. Lightsaber." title comes to mind. If this had simply been titled "Spy Report", would less people have read it? I don't think so. Speaking as someone who was an AOTC spoiler junkie, I highlighted everything I could find, whether or not I thought the title sounded interesting.

 

That's pretty much what I was getting at, Windy. We know that TFN will use titles that are more than just "Spoiler (date of article)," so I was suggesting a way that this could be done while revealing as little as possible about the spoiler to people that do not highlight the text.

 

Here's a suggestion I posted into the AC:

Give them generic category headings ? If it?s an Anakin spoiler, and an Obi-Wan spoiler, and a romance spoiler, then you write ?Spoiler: Anakin, Romance, Obi-Wan?. Not very exciting, but it gets the job done. It should make it easier to find specific spoilers as well.

 

The problem is that such things are not very exciting, and like most other sites, TFN is always trying to find more readers.

I agree. Reaperfett, however, made a good point in the Comms thread; we shouldn't be spoiled simply because TFN wants an SA person to click a link.




Although it would be preferable, I sincerely doubt the idea of TFN either numbering reports or just having "Spy Report" as the title would be accepted, mainly because it is a pretty dry way of dealing with things and may confuse spoiled members (ie. if the title is just "spy report" they may not be able to remember if they've already clicked it). As such, something more along the lines of Fingorfin's suggestions is probably more realistic

Keep the ideas coming, this is all very helpful

 

I agree with Windy in that it would be wonderful if spoiler reports were simply titled that, 'spoiler report.' Not only would it protect us, it clearly alerts anyone who wants to read spoilers. They can then easily click on the link and get spoiled away. A more ambiguous title like that would encourage more people to actually go to the Ep. III section of TFN then if the title was descriptive. If the title gives all the information away, there's no need to actually read the report.

But thank you for bringing this up. As we know have the 'Latest TFN Headlines' on each page of this board, it's imperative that's something is done so we can't be spoiled through that. If they (the higher-ups) can't just leave something entitled 'Spoiler Report' more vague titles are needed. I remember headlines last time called "Yoda/Dooku Duel." I was angry over that because I hadn't known until then that Yoda would be fighting. In that case something more general like "Final Duel" should have been used. Obviously we all knew there would be a final duel, but that way, no information on the actual participants of the duel would be revealed. For Ep. III, general titles like that need to be used. I do not want to go to TFN someday and find this glaring headline entitled "The Death of Padmé" or something else equally important and spoilerish.

 

Well, I talked with stinrab and he said to post this here, even though I am a spoiled person (GASP!). But I figured I would help out you guys again.

So, here is the idea:

TFN should have two seperate sections:

Episode 3 (regular news). This would be news such as when the shooting has begun as well as stuff from the OS (which by NSA rules is not spoiler material). Yes, I realize there are those that want to see NOTHING, but I am basing the seperate sections on the NSA rules, which states: 5. Any information taken from the official site, including the Select pics, is not a spoiler.

and

Episode 3 (Spy Reports)

When there is a new spy report, just put a notice on the main site that there is a new report. So, if you want to see the report, you have to click on the link to get to the Spy reports section. That way you NSAers don't have to worry about spoilers being in the title of the reports, and we spoiled folk can have the fun we want too.

 

Just having "spoiler report" will never fly. If someone does a search for TFN spoiler reports, you'll have a hundred titles that just say "spoiler report." There needs to be a point of differentiation.

I think having the date next to it is the best viable option I've read so far.

 

Carter-TFN

The problem with just having the dates next to it will present a problem for the 3SAers. They will complain, most likely, that it is easy to reference which Spy reports they want to read by the title on it. How hard is it to seperate the Spy reports in to a seperate webpage? The reason I suggest this is that it seems to work for places like TORN, where they have a seperate section for Spy Reports.

Having a seperate section solves a couple of problems, actually. 1). The NSAers can avoid it easily (since there would be a link to the spy report section w/o a title) and 2). it would allow the spoiled people to search the spy reports easier (i.e. you can go to one place with all of the spy reports and not have to sift through all of the other stuff)

 

Serperate sections or not, we still have that little TFN news box at the bottom of the page which would no doubt contain titles from both the SA and the NS sections....





Mace Windy,
win or lose, eagles fan for life!

 

Having a separate webpage has been discussed in the past too and that's not going to happen but that's off topic and doesn't solve the issue of spoilers in titles.

 

I'm going spoiler-free, but I won't freak out if I'm accidentally spoiled. To find a solution, one must think on both sides of the fence. I haven't yet checked out the thread in Comms, but I would like to see some good ideas from the spoiled group.

As for my own idea, if a new page for spoilers is out of the question, then labelling the links with a Spy Report: New Character as of 1/20/03 or something like that would probably be general enough to not offend the spoiler-free people, but intriguing enough to attract the spoiler junkies. I'm really not adding anything new, I'm just emphasized what I liked.

 

See signature /

 

About the whole Spy Report thing and the search. On the main page the Spy Report could be labelled simply: "Spy Report" or "New Spy Report" and once you get to the page, or the Episode 3 index, there could be a label for it there. Noone is spoiled if they don't want to be, and noone can complain about not being able to find a specific spy report within the Episode 3 index. Also, there could be a option to specifically exclude finding any Spy Report titles when searching through TFN.

 

Just let the heading be "New spoiler report!"

Not mention names or anything, just the fact that new possible spoilers have been located.





DD - S&T free Spliff

 

Just "Spoiler report"!

 

I'm sorry, but these spoiler people are being obnoxious and lazy if they can't accept a simple "new spoiler report-1-21-03" headline. If they want to keep tabs on the information, they should just copy-paste the info to a word file for future reference.

I went spoiler free for TPM (until I bought the soundtrack a week before the movie release, grr) and for AOTC (completely..had no idea about Yoda.) I want to be that way for Ep 3 too; the only info I get is from TOS.

The least TF.N can do is keep the titles of their Spy Reports neutral.

Skywalker Child