Forum:Temporary forums/Changing the Spoiler Policy

Right now, Tardis:Spoiler policy forbids any information about future releases from the wiki. The sole exception is series pages, where anything goes. But this approach is unworkably out of date for a few reasons:
 * For almost a year, the top trending search on this wiki was [REDACTED], an actor who we still don't even have a page for! By catering to extreme spoilerphobes, we're failing a vast majority of our users, who do want to read about future cast and crew on the wiki.
 * The BBC puts an enormous amount of effort into promoting these announcements. Someone who sees the end of The Power of the Doctor without knowing about [REDACTED] just isn't experiencing the franchise the way it's intended to be experienced; we shouldn't be bending over backwards to serve them to the exclusion of all others.
 * Regarding major character announcements, if I hadn't been spoiled by the news and the cover of Doctor Who Magazine, I'd have been spoiled by the ads and article links that appear in our own sidebar! When we got the point of building specific loopholes for Fandom, that should have been an indication that the spoiler policy needed a larger rethink.

That said, I don't think we should throw out the concerns of spoilerphobic readers and editors entirely. The solution can be achieved very simply by drawing a line between two types of spoiler: official spoilers, which come from press releases, Doctor Who Magazine interviews, and other official announcements; and unofficial spoilers such as rumours, leaks, sightings, off-the-record comments, and so on, even if these are reported in news outlets.

I suggest we allow official spoilers only on the following pages, each marked with :
 * 1) Pages for new cast and crew. If somone comes to the wiki and searches for an actor who hasn't debuted yet, they're looking for spoilers.
 * 2) "Spoiler" subpages for established cast and crew, using our new Tardis:Subpage policy.
 * 3) Talk pages for -marked pages.

Let me explain #2. An example would be David Tennant/Spoilers. That subpage won't duplicate any information from David Tennant; it'll only cover spoilery official announcements. When that information is no longer a spoiler, it can be copy-pasted to the main page. (If the subpage is then empty and no longer needed, a delete tag can be added, and an admin can merge the edit histories.) The subpage will be linked from the main page with, placed after the last paragraph of the article's lead section:

The advantage of using a subpage is spoilerphobes can still browse the wiki without fear. If we just put spoilers on the main page of a returning cast member, a spoilerphobe wouldn't be able to read David Tennant without spoiling themselves; with subpages, they can. Nor would the presence of the template and subpage link spoil that David Tennant is returning to the TV show: David Tennant/Spoilers might just describe an upcoming Big Finish appearance!

There'd still be no unofficial spoilers (rumours etc) on these pages, and like existing policy, absolutely no spoilers on in-universe pages. Thoughts? – n8 (☎) 20:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)