My 2 cents: Spoilers should not be allowed no matter how old they are or what event. Of course we need a type of method to talk even about new subjects without marking an entire thread as "Mass Effect 3 general discussion[Spoilers]".
I await the spoiler tags.
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I guess I can't spoil the giveaways for you guys anymore :( [spoiler]When these tags work if the tag will be set up this way the real spoil is that you'll never win. You're also here forever.[/spoiler]
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The cake is a lie.
Oh wait... spoiler.
IMO spoiler tags are worthless to stop spoilers because those who are intentionally going to ruin games are going to intentionally ruin games. Those who quote something 'funny' (it's really only funny if you get the context) from a game, like I did above, are just as guilty of spoilers. Sure, the intent isn't the same, the first being to ruin the game experience, but the latter is just as 'ruinous' to someone who hasn't played the game yet.
The only real solution to stop spoilers is to bar any discussion and opinion of games beyond the mechanics. Any story-based discussion will invariably lead to SOME amount of spoilers.
Also on a semi-unrelated note, I personally think this site needs ACTUAL [tags], not wikiformatting. Case in point, look at all the people already saying [spoiler(s)]. Alternatively, auto-parsing of links would be good. Start at http:// or www. and end with the first space.
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could it? possibly. would it? i wouldn't like to think so.
if the post was flagged as a "spoiler", this message could then be hidden and displayed to others as a hidden spoiler until they choose to view it for themselves.
@"Don't like someone? Flag all their comments"
one person flagging someones comments could have no effect. it may require e.g. 3 or 5 flags, each from different users to prevent this type of abuse
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Because no one abuses the youtube comments.
Are you really going to spend the time to unhide all the comments JUST to see what they say? JUST to see if they are or are not inappropriate? That would defeat the whole purpose of hiding them in the first place.
It's a matter of censorship, not full on censorship but censorship none the less. It gives a few (any few) the power to hide things they don't like. And the few becomes even less if someone has a second account or a friend to go along with it.
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every registered user on this website is subject to a $50 game check on their steam account already. multiple accounts are extremely negligible. IF multiple users coordinated to maliciously abuse the system, it would become obvious very quickly. i doubt there are many here who would risk their priveleges to utilise this website for such trivial abuse.
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every registered user on this website is subject to a $50 game check on their steam account already. multiple accounts are extremely negligible.
3 and 5 are also extremely negligible.
Not to accuse anyone of something that doesn't even exist yet, but are you saying someone popular, like Yatterman or thejadefalcon, couldn't find different groups of 2~4 people to get a comment or ten hidden?
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regardless of how many members this website has, the forum community is still rather small. if anyones comments were abused by this system, it would be incredibly obvious and disciplinary action could be taken towards the offenders.
if this feature was introduced here with a strict policy regarding abuse, i imagine we would see very little of it.
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any method of enforcing the removal of spoilers initially entails a larger work-load on the mods, but this system would largely automate the process via regular user interaction. at the end of the day, spoiler posts are very limited anyway and if this system worked as intended with minimal abuse, it would only serve to descrease the work for mods and protect non-malicious users who are simply naive of the policies being introduced.
nonetheless, i think this type of system would benefit from a trial run of some length to evaluate just how effective/how much of a nuisance it could become
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Well I was banned for spoiling Arkham City an hour ago. Didn't see the post here and thought the guys at the chat were joking.
At least I didn't spoil the real ending, it was the alternative one and I didn't even know if it was true, I just said random stuff.
But yeah indeed, I think that spoilers should be prohibited, it just ends the fun.
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I understand what you say, and also, I didn't know it was an ending at all, I just said that randomly to make people think it was true, when I searched on google I found out it unfortunately was. Yeah I was banned and I deserved that, good to see you didn't read that.
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Personally i dont mind that much on spoilers, but i understand why some people hate them, and i think there should be considerations in that matter and, if enforcing it as a policy helps people actually stand by it, then by all means.
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Imo its impossible to have a non-extremist spoiler policy. You can't draw a line in water. Same applies here. Spoilers can be different to different people. The same thing might not annoy one person as much as it might others.
I for one am not so hyped up about spoilers so long as its not repetitious or specifically intended to ruin the game for someone. That just displays a negative attitude and should be dealt with firmly. However if a discussion is going on and a thing or two slips out i don't think it deserves severe punishment. Especially with older games which as i said earlier, if you really care about it so much and you haven't played yet its only your fault. I don't see it being fair to stop people who played it talking about it freely. New releases i'm sure most people have the sense to understand there are likely many others who haven't been able to play it yet and lay off it for somtime. Except for those sadists i mentioned.
If you must have a rule about this i feel you should consider time since release as one of the major factors. Doing a blanket ban for spoilers of games however old is a very fascist way of dealing with things and it can only do more harm than good. Two years in my opinion is plenty of time for all those who truly care to have watched/played/read whatever is beig discussed. If they haven't it only shows it hasn't interested them enough to take it up, at least at that point of time. Its not fair to stop those who have followed it since the beginning to discuss it freely because a minority developed an interest late or are even just feigning interest. If not two, as jade suggested five years is way more than enough time.
EDIT:
Also, i don't have much experience on the forums but from what i've seen of the chatroom, over the course of the day spoiler incidents are far too few (even intentional ones) to warrant such drastic action. A zero tolerance policy here can only serve to suffocate the community. It is probably more rampant on the forums because of more people using it, but spoilers on forums can be dealt with easily enough by warning against possible spoilers in the thread or post. Any spoiling happening beyond that is only the reader's fault.
EDIT #2:
Deleted the post by mistake. Stupid touch screen phone. Reposting. Why doesn't the site confirm before deleting :S
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Any spoiling happening beyond that is only the reader's fault
Were you able to avoid that one okay? No? So sorry, because that's what happened to me earlier with Mass Effect 3 when I tried to remove the comment with advanced knowledge that there was a spoiler. Do not blame the reader.
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Lol you seem to have missed the point. Or more likely i was not clear enough. This kind of careless and/or intentional spoiling should be dealt with, that i agree. But for example on steam forums i came across instances where there were ample spoiler warnings in posts yet they were flamed for it. Steam forums even has bb code for hidig spoilers from review. After all that if people still find their games spoilt whom else do you blame but the reader?
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Well its a hard issue in my opinion, if you start punishing spoilers that bad, then the discusion of any game wont be posible, what is a spoiler and what is not? I really dont know how this issue can be handled, but i do see a lot of bad repercusion that could come with a bad response to it.
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Yeah, i mean it could happen that someone leaks some info without meaning any harm, in those cases i know it can ruin it for others but i guess theres not much to be done. But if they were spoling just for the fun of it, there should be a punishment. I guess its just common sense, dont really think a new rule should be added, or maybe yes, i have no idea actually :P.
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Oh, those spoiling guys are so fucking funny, oh their jokes ha ha - so witty! I'm sure that with their tremendous sense of humour it won't be hard for them to find some other place to share it with others and we should do anything possible to encourage them to do so.
Uh, but seriously now. Sadly, I'm pretty much sure there is no way to bring strict policy on that as it could result in many causes with disproportionate penalty to the offense, when done not being aware of possible harm or not in bad faith. However, I believe that common sense in most of the incidents can easly tell you was it made on purpose or not, so I rely on the wisdom of mods and people reporting. But when you caught one, just ban him permanently - this community isn't a group you have to be in so don't be an asshole and try to be nice. Or get the fuck out.
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If there's spoilers in a thread, why don't mods or the OP (provided they find it in a reasonable amount of time) change the topic name and make it say something like spoiler alert or spoiler in brackets, even IF you add spoiler tags, if the discussion has spoilers. Or have a spoiler report button and if it gets like say I dunno, 10 or 20 votes, the topic automatically edits the title so it says something like may contain spoilers or spoilers in brackets. I don;t know if it can be done, but if it can I think it could be useful. I can tell you now, people will use spoiler tags for things that may not need spoiling for humorous effect and others may get used to that and accidentally spoil a game for themselves?
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Bumping for anyone who missed the fucking memo, like the idiot in chat I just banned.
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Okay, community.
Thank you all for your thoughts. I very much so enjoyed this discussion and appreciate all of your input. I've reached a decision and hope it's a good compromise. We will not add an official "spoiler policy" into the FAQ and we will continue to deal with serious offenses on an individual basis. It is not in our best interest to create an atmosphere of fear around here causing members to worry about how far they can go with talking about a certain game. If it's on topic and people are giving proper tags, it shouldn't be a problem.
Please note that the three people that were banned spoiling the endings of games had no reason to post those spoilers, they weren't at all related to the comment they were replying and the spoilers were succinctly written in big, bold capital letters. I understand most of you probably thought I meant any spoiler, but that is not the case.
I'm afraid a policy that will actively punish users that spoil either major or minor events in any medium of entertainment could be seen as vague, which is why we've been resisting making this an official policy. What if a spoiler is fake? How do we judge what is seen as a permanent ban for a certain spoiler? I've had both LA Noire and Mass Effect 3 spoiled in the last two weeks. I don't care how long a game has been released, this is not at all appropriate behavior and can be very harmful.
Any thoughts?
Update: We will work on adding the spoiler tag in Markup, but please understand that the people that spoiled these two titles were clearly set to spoil the game for everyone, not to discuss these games. They claimed it was only a joke in their support ticket filed, so a Spoiler tag would not have prevented these spoilers as these members would not have used them.
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