Post contains SPOILERS! Oh NO!
Feb. 1st, 2006 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boyofbadgersThis is just ridiculous: wikipedia includes spoiler warnings when discussing a Borges short story.
I'm not 100% anti people being careful about spoilers. Having watched enough serial TV, I know full well how annoying it can be when someone gives away what happens next because it's already been shown on Sky/Torrented/they know the scriptwriter etc. So, y'know, fair enough.
Except that in this case it's an encyclopedia entry about a particular short story. There's no massive over-arching narrative; it's one self contained piece. If you look it up, you must surely expect the article to contain some plot information? While it's hardly a gripping tale, you can't talk about it sensibly without mentioning that (oh noes) Uqbar turns out not to exist - the article ceases to make much sense without the stuff enclosed between the spoiler warnings. You wouldn't expect a normal piece of criticism to have eg 'SPOILER WARNING: in discussing Jane Austen's attitudes towards the economics of marriage we may accidentally give away that Darcy and Elizabeth GET MARRIED...oh bum' at the front, so why do the plot obsessed geeks of wiki-land feel the need to warn us in big letters that a discussion of a short story might possibly just give away what happens in it?
Bah, ignore me. I'm just a grumpy old git overreacting to being patronised. If I'm not careful, I'll start talking about dumbing down soon.
I'm not 100% anti people being careful about spoilers. Having watched enough serial TV, I know full well how annoying it can be when someone gives away what happens next because it's already been shown on Sky/Torrented/they know the scriptwriter etc. So, y'know, fair enough.
Except that in this case it's an encyclopedia entry about a particular short story. There's no massive over-arching narrative; it's one self contained piece. If you look it up, you must surely expect the article to contain some plot information? While it's hardly a gripping tale, you can't talk about it sensibly without mentioning that (oh noes) Uqbar turns out not to exist - the article ceases to make much sense without the stuff enclosed between the spoiler warnings. You wouldn't expect a normal piece of criticism to have eg 'SPOILER WARNING: in discussing Jane Austen's attitudes towards the economics of marriage we may accidentally give away that Darcy and Elizabeth GET MARRIED...oh bum' at the front, so why do the plot obsessed geeks of wiki-land feel the need to warn us in big letters that a discussion of a short story might possibly just give away what happens in it?
Bah, ignore me. I'm just a grumpy old git overreacting to being patronised. If I'm not careful, I'll start talking about dumbing down soon.
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Date: 2006-02-01 03:54 pm (UTC)OED's most relevant definition of "encyclopaedia" seems to be "An elaborate and exhaustive repertory of information on all the branches of some particular art or department of knowledge; esp. one arranged in alphabetical order." Admittedly, this may be seen as more obviously true of Wikipedia if we accept "fandom and teh internets" as a "department of knowledge"...
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Date: 2006-02-01 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 04:51 pm (UTC)Wikipedia is good for some things, less good for others. And people who believe everything they read on the web will almost certainly have bigger problems to deal with than Wikipedia telling lies about Harry Potter...