Post contains SPOILERS! Oh NO!

[boyofbadgers]

This 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.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My impression was that the standard spoiler warning appears on every fiction-related article in Wikipedia.

[badasstronaut.livejournal.com]

It's just become a internest convention though really, hasn't it? Because of all those sensitive and potentially explosive people who get upset and burst into tears and lash out at all the world if they find out who dies in the next Harry Pooter book before they've finished it.

NEW CONVENTIONS NEEDED

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

subtextual and/or allegorical antispoiler ranting

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

ALso, is is a Borges story. 'S not like there's a cliff-hanging whodunnit sort of ending to it.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia attempts to justify the spoiler convention (at least, that's what I think they're doing) by explaining that "Not all visitors will recognize the site as an encyclopedia, which should strive first to inform, spoilers or not."

With my webmaster hat on, I suppose they're making a valid point (though I think it's being taken to silly extremes). With my everyday hat, though, I'm having a big attack of YOU'D THINK YOU'D THINK.

[thomppw.livejournal.com]

i took the spoiler warning out

i imagine someone will catch that, but um