Tardis talk:Where spoilers are allowed

Talk pages
In the discussion at Talk:Series 14 (Doctor Who), Shambala108 asked us to criticise policies elsewhere. In the seemingly permanent absence of our forums, this is the next best place.

I propose the following: If spoilers are allowed on a page, spoilers are also allowed on the corresponding talk page. The talk page will be tagged with just like the page is.

The goal of this proposal is that it will allow us to talk about a page on its talk page.

Our spoiler policy is designed to protect a hypothetical editor who doesn't want to know about the existence of new stories until the moment they're released, at which point they want to know everything. We currently ask this editor to not visit Series 14 (Doctor Who). This change will simply deprive them of Talk:Series 14 (Doctor Who). Since there's no reason for an editor to want to talk about a page they cannot read, this is a reasonable suggestion.

This change will affect very few pages. There are fewer than 100 articles with, and of those, fewer than 20 have talk pages attached. However, these talk pages require a disproportionate amount of moderation. This change will relieve our overworked volunteer admins of their duty to manually monitor these talk pages to censor spoilers, which editors persistently try to discuss there for some reason.

I think this proposal does not require a forum discussion because
 * 1) it will affect very few pages and
 * 2) there is currently no such thing as a forum discussion, nor will there be soon, maybe ever.

Based on the responses at Talk:Series 14 (Doctor Who), I don't believe many people oppose this suggestion. Looking forward to feedback. – n8 (☎) 03:55, 15 September 2022 (UTC)


 * But I was told wheels were in motion!
 * I obviously agree. There's no reason for a user to be on a talk page for a series unless they're interested in the internal wiki processes concerning page for the series. But that implies that they must first be interested in the page for the series. (Or that the issue is broad enough to encompass multiple pages, but that should be moved to a forum post anyhow. I mean. Should.)
 * I guess the argument could be made that people who edit a series page might be comfortable seeing production/high level casting choices, but don't want to see leaks of returning villains, etc. But this ignores that, well, there are rumors sections on these pages. Unless there's some functionality of wiki that shows you an entire edit in a particular namespace (and this functionality applies only to the talk namespace rather than the article namespace), I'm just not seeing the justification aside from Czech's post saying "oh, our policy says X", applying it perhaps correctly, perhaps overly literally, and then there appears to be no further discussion. Of course, there may have been, we can't tell, because the forums are still down. But it doesn't look like it, there's no reference to any thread I can see. (Note that I would still agree with keeping spoilers out of edit summaries. While you have to go looking for the talk pages, the edit summaries show up in recent activity.) Najawin ☎  04:12, 15 September 2022 (UTC)


 * If altering this policy is on the board, I'd like to request a corresponding change, in that spoilers be allowed in sandbox namespace, as it would make things much easier to draft, as opposed to going to an alternate Wiki to draft pages, which muddies edit histories. 📯 📂 11:39, 15 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Cheers for the support, both of you. To clarify, the "wheels in motion" concern the rescue of the forum archives, which in my view is an imaginary prerequisite to the establishment of new forums. Nothing in any prior thread would prevent us from discussing and enacting this proposal today.

To be absolutely clear, this proposal will not affect how we treat edit summaries, rumors vs official announcements, or sandboxes, nor will it affect the reasoning which led to the current policies in any way. It's meant to be a light patch of our current rules, not a comprehensive fix – nor can it be, if we're to have any hope of it being enacted in the current state of things. – n8 (☎) 12:14, 15 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Definitely against any Sandbox change. It's not immediately obvious from title that Sandboxes will have spoilers, unlike the title of a talk page, and reading what other people do in their Sandboxes is a good way to keep up to date with the other projects people are working on, as well as the current trends among editors. The "talk page of spoilerific pages" change minimizes risk while still allowing actual work to take place. Najawin ☎  18:07, 15 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Not sure why'd you be against it, considering you have a spoilery sandbox. Also, while a sandbox may have the potential to spoiler something for someone, if it does have the template on it, it's fair warning.


 * I also feel the pros of spoilery sandboxes far outweigh the potential cons, as otherwise we have to go to an entirely different Wiki just to draft up a damn page about an actor. Linking to that — when the discussion about the creation of the page will inevitably arise — will be difficult and preserving edit histories when importing and exporting can be restricted from Wiki to Wiki, makes everything a bloody nightmare.


 * As a compromise, perhaps, in order for spoilers to be allowed in sandboxes, the page must be titled accordingly: e.g. User:Epsilon the Eternal/Spoilers Sandbox 1, which isn't allowed to have a specific title as that could, in an extreme example, could potentially spoil something. 📯 📂 19:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Addressed on your talk page so as to not bog this discussion down with minutiae. Najawin ☎  20:09, 15 September 2022 (UTC)