PathfinderWiki talk:Spoilers

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Define "major spoiler"

Changes Accepted This section contains a discussion about changes to this policy that have been accepted.

Per Special:WikiForum/Dealing_with_spoilers, I propose adding the below content in bold to the spoiler policy:

Below are the procedures to follow if you find potential major spoilers on the site, such as any key plot points or revelations as part of an Adventure Path or other adventure:

-Oznogon (talk) 00:56, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree. --Morbus Iff (talk) 00:38, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Would love to have any additional consensus on this proposal, even if it is to reject it or to wait until Second Edition releases. -Oznogon (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree as well. Is there any time frame after which we shouldn't consider something a spoiler, however? Generally, the APs don't revisit the same topics in a fashion that spoilers from prior APs are necessarily "common knowledge" in the future, but it's worth considering, even though various gaming groups might decide to run older APs, since they're still available. (For example, when Curse of the Crimson Throne was reissued, or someone inspired to run Kingmaker as a result of the current computer game.) I tend to think spoilers shouldn't "expire," though I also think they should be cordoned off more explicitly; my suggestion for that is below. -- Kniedzwi (talk) 21:01, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry to not join in earlier as still in catch up mode (and not far off 19 Dec) but I'll jump in now as you asked. Re the wording above, agreed, I think it a sensible addition to the policy. --Fleanetha (talk) 22:52, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd want to specify that back matter articles would not be automatically considered part of these Adventure Paths unless relevant to the adventure itself (like how the Karzoug article seems to be considered to be a spoiler for Secrets of Roderic's Cove even if Karzoug himself has nothing to do with the AP until the fifth volume). - HTD (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

The Karzoug article cites Secrets of Roderic's Cove, but the spoiler tag is for the AP as a whole. What do you mean by "back matter" in this context? --Kniedzwi (talk) 02:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Can we get any further comments on this policy change so we can ratify it now please? Personally, I am still in favour of the wording change even with 2E released. I propose we accept this change in one week's time (12 December 2019) unless major disagreement is encountered when the time can be extended. --Fleanetha (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Policy accepted. Thank you to all who helped. --Fleanetha (talk) 15:45, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Suggest avoiding game spoilers

Changes Accepted This section contains a discussion about changes to this policy that have been accepted.

Per Special:WikiForum/Dealing_with_spoilers, I propose adding the below content to the spoiler policy:

Avoid including information necessary to player or story advancement within an adventure whenever possible. If such information is necessary, avoid phrasing it in the manner of a strategy guide.

For example:

• It's OK to note that the rainbow-hued shrines in an antagonist's temple provide various magical protections to its immortal inhabitants.
• Avoid describing in detail how these rainbow-hued shrines can be used to defeat the antagonist.

-Oznogon (talk) 00:56, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this in principal. It will always be a judgment call on where to draw the line. In the states example, the fact that the antagonist built the key to exploiting his own weakness into shrines in his own temple is a very flavorful example of his hubris. This is an aspect of his character that we shouldn't just throw out because an adventure allows the PCs to interact with these items. Ideally, the wiki would be useful for both GMs running published adventures, but also GMs writing their own, and RPG authors/developers looking for compiled information on canon sources from myriad publications. I think they key wording in the suggested text is "avoid phrasing it in the manner of a strategy guide."— Yoda8myhead (talk) 01:24, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed on the key wording—the point this should get across is to encourage descriptions of people and locations, not tactics and strategies, and if those tactics and strategies are illustrative of something then to phrase it in an illustrative manner ("In his hubris, he created a complex color-coded method of disarming the defenses..." and not "To disable X defense and gain access to weapon Y, remove the Z-colored rod..."). -Oznogon (talk) 01:33, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with the sentiment and that "avoid phrasing it in the matter of a strategy guide" is the key conceit. Perhaps "Avoid including information necessary to player or story advancement within an adventure". I also think the example is a little too convoluted. That is, I know what you're saying (and its relation to the current controversy), but it might serve to have a clearer, simpler, example for general usage. Perhaps leave the first OK alone and replace the second bullet with simply "Avoid describing in detail how these rainbow-hued shrines can be used to defeat the antagonist." --Morbus Iff (talk) 00:49, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I've revised the proposal with your suggestion. -Oznogon (talk) 00:51, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

See Talk:Ro ap Han and Special:Diff/223984 for another example where this policy change would apply. -Oznogon (talk) 22:00, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Would love to have any additional consensus on this proposal, especially from HTD since the related examples are their edits. -Oznogon (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

In principle, this approach makes sense to me. That said, I actually think it might be worthwhile to use the MediaWiki Spoilers extension to hide text blocks that might be spoilers in a given article. For example, in the entry on the Blackjack, it's a spoiler for Curse of the Crimson Throne that Vencarlo Orisini is the Blackjack. It would be useful to have a Blackjack entry, but the current History section should probably be hidden behind a spoiler tag. (Likewise, having "Blackjack" as an alias for Vencarlo is a spoiler and should probably be removed, or moved from the text box to a similarly blocked section within the article itself. If I may, however, what would make it necessary to include spoiler information in an article? (Specifically with regard to, "If such information is necessary...".) -- Kniedzwi (talk) 20:51, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Agree with sentiment and wording above. This change straddles the border between spoiling stories (bad enough) and potentially ruining a game for a set of players. Is there a useful parallel here with crunchiness? Can we go as far as saying mechanics that give players advantage within a Pathfinder game should not be published in the wiki? --Fleanetha (talk) 23:10, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Depending on context, prohibiting "mechanics that give players advantage" could mean removing most, maybe all, mechanical information from the wiki. I think I've said before that I'd be on board with that, too, but I'm not sure whether that adds to the discussion of this specific proposal or if it might be more suited to discussion on Project talk:No crunch. -Oznogon (talk) 01:25, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Kniedzwi, I moved my response about the Spoilers extension out of this proposal and to #Hiding spoilers since it's quite a bit broader in scope than the proposal.

Re: "If such information is necessary...", per PathfinderWiki: About we're an encyclopedic source, so we try to comprehensively summarize the Pathfinder campaign setting. Per Project:Point of view, we try to do so from an omniscient in-universe perspective. What we can avoid is describing things about the campaign setting that are, with at least a little judgment applied on our parts, pretty clearly metatextual elements meant to serve the gameplay of a tabletop roleplaying game that adds relatively little to the setting—the "information necessary to player or story advancement" part of the proposal.

Sometimes describing such things are unavoidable while also being encyclopedic. (Your recent questions about listing the inhabitants of the Ivory Labyrinth are relevant here.) We can describe that there are creatures in the labyrinth, identify them, and mention broad details about them, while also avoiding descriptions of where precisely they are, their exact tactics and behaviors when encountered within the circumstances of the adventure, ways they can be avoided or defeated that are implicit from a gameplay perspective but aren't explicitly described, etc. -Oznogon (talk) 01:50, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Agree with this proposal. - HTD (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Can we get any further comments on this policy change so we can ratify it now please? There is broad agreement on this already and elements have been removed for discussion elsewhere that were raised but not directly relevant to this change proposal. Therefore, I propose we accept this change in one week's time (12 December 2019) unless major disagreement is encountered when the time can be extended. --Fleanetha (talk) 17:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Accepting this policy change now. --Fleanetha (talk) 15:50, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Prohibit redirects that constitute major spoilers

Changes Accepted This section contains a discussion about changes to this policy that have been accepted.

Per Special:WikiForum/Dealing_with_spoilers, I propose adding the below content to the spoiler policy:

Do not create redirects that themselves constitute major spoilers, or otherwise circumvent spoiler warnings for visitors and chroniclers who have opted into them. An article can contain spoilers, but its title should not itself be a spoiler.

For example, if the identity of a character, item, or location is intentionally disguised and revealing the deception is a key plot point in an adventure:

• It's OK to write the article from an in-world perspective using the alias as the article title and explaining the true hidden identity within the article text, and to then redirect the true hidden identity to the alias—only people who know the spoiler will search for the alias, and others will see a spoiler alert at the top of the article before encountering the nature of the spoiler in the article text.

• Avoid writing the article with the title being the true hidden identity and then redirecting the alias to the true identity—people who do not know the spoiler will be immediately spoiled by the result, and people who already know the spoiler aren't saved any time or confusion.

-Oznogon (talk) 00:56, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree that we should default to the most commonly used in-world name for articles whose alternative titles could constitute a spoiler. This should be reflected not only here, but in PathfinderWiki:Naming conventions as well. This way, the spoiler template at the top of the alias-named article gives people who don't know the secret warning that something they may be playing/reading could be spoiled by continuing reading the article.— Yoda8myhead (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Added a proposal to PathfinderWiki talk:Naming conventions. -Oznogon (talk) 01:28, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree. --Morbus Iff (talk) 01:11, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Would love to have any additional consensus on this proposal, especially from HTD since the related examples are their edits. -Oznogon (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

I very much agree with the redirect policy, particularly for things like the Peacock Spirit redirect to Xanderghul, which is a spoiler for Return of the Runelords. -- Kniedzwi (talk) 20:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Most prudent - agreed. Thanks for leading on the amendments here Oznogon - very valuable. --Fleanetha (talk) 23:14, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

How would we handle the redirects in question, then? Are we leaving them as red links? - HTD (talk) 01:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

If there are ways to create redirects that lessens or avoids spoilers, create them. If not, discuss them, or consider separate linked articles. The point is to avoid situations where simple navigation results in an immediate, major spoiler.

Re: Glorio Arkona, along with the suggested change to the naming convention policy, Bahor would redirect to Glorio Arkona.

Re: Kniedzwi's example—and especially in light of Project:Point of view and the statement that only Xanderghul is aware of the Peacock Spirit's true nature—I would personally prefer to revert to Xanderghul and the Peacock Spirit divine aspect having separate articles, and then linking the two to one another. The current redirect is a rather forceful spoiler to anyone looking for info on the Peacock Spirit, is confusingly targeted to the top of the article and not the section on the Peacock Spirit, and also resulted in canon information specific to the divine aspect's in-universe perception being discarded. -Oznogon (talk) 03:00, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Edited the above to reflect the current state of things since modifying the redirect. -Oznogon (talk) 01:25, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Placing here a discussion I started at Talk:Hirakonu as part of the debate. --Fleanetha (talk) 14:43, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

This particular proposal for change has broad agreement and usefulness. I propose to accept this but, as there's been a gap, I'll delay a week to allow any further input and accept it on Thursday 5 December unless we get major disagreement before then. --Fleanetha (talk) 00:28, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

No further comments received, so this is now accepted policy plus the associated Naming Convention change. Thanks to all those who helped shape it. --Fleanetha (talk) 15:43, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Hiding spoilers

User:Kniedzwi, re: the Spoilers extension, we already have {{Collapsible}} and the extension has not been maintained in over a year. More philosophically, it's been discussed before (1, 2) and isn't straightforward to implement—many, many articles would need revision, there would be endless debate over what constitutes a spoiler, it's been considered by a lot of folks to be counter to the goal of being an encyclopedic source, and especially—when considering this point in time—all of that work would be discarded when the setting timeline's main point of reference resets in Pathfinder Second Edition and everything we currently consider a spoiler would no longer be considered as such.

I'd be open to revisiting a discussion about more proactive spoiler options after we've dealt with the fallout of 2E, where a relative clean slate would make it both easier and wiser to start considering and enforcing such a policy. But there's already been a lot of discussion, both in the past and recently in Discord, that's made me extremely hesitant to suggest, endorse, or even research more restrictive spoiler policies. -Oznogon (talk) 01:50, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

All fair points, though anecdotally, I know of many people who have complained about the spoiler policy here, to the point where they request their players not to visit the site at all, which is an even deeper cut to the goal. On the note about 2E and the fallout, is there somewhere that's being discussed? I'd very much like to know that the work I've been doing will be useful going forward, and I know there are many players who will want to continue (re)playing older APs. --Kniedzwi (talk) 02:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Spoilers in a 2E world

Given that the results of most APs are spoiled in the 2E Core Rulebook, the current lodestone of the entire system, what's the plan for dealing with that? Future books haven't helped this any. For example, if I want to make a page on the Stasian Technology, introduced in Guns & Gears, I'm kind of SOL unless I just want to flag the entire page as spoilers forever, regardless of how widespread that technology becomes. CadeHerrig (talk) 19:46, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Multiverse theory isn't apperied for that?--Laclale (talk) 06:13, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

At this point, I'm seeing some merit in trying something based on {{Collapsible}} or Extension:Spoilers—a way to mark specific passages as spoilers for specific adventures while leaving the rest of the article safe to read for people who intend to play the adventures in question. With the current system, a single word is sufficient for a whole article to be flagged as spoilers, with no way to distinguish what is spoilers and what is not (and as I've noticed, when a spoiler badge is added, it is there to remain forever), and as more and more adventures get released and subsequently canonised, it's only a matter of time until the only articles that new players can safely read are low-traffic and (relatively) unimportant ones (while the big ones are marked as spoilers for several APs at once). - HTD (talk) 11:12, 4 March 2023 (UTC)