On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 11:16:05PM -0500, David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote: > Gaertk at aol.com writes: > > [snip everything quoted] > > How do we want to handle spoiler protection when new books > > come out? I suggest putting "SPOILER" in the subject and > > at least ten lines of spoiler space preceding the spoilers. > > How long should we require spoiler protection? One month? > We do need a policy, and hence some rules statement, in the main > list. Unfortunately, I think serious spoilers need protection > essentially *forever*. I see people running into trouble with that > fairly frequently on rec.arts.sf.written, for example. Probably a > shorter exclusion on *any* spoilers is a good idea too. rasfw deals in a wide variety of authors. Any particular reader cannot hope to keep up with the reading of the entire group. In addition, many readers use discussion in rasfw as a way to locate new authors and books of interest. Thus, major spoilers need spoiler protection for long periods of time. Minor spoilers are protected after the first release for a short period of time, at least for works that receive significant discussion. However, more tightly focused discussion groups typically use a short spoiler period for new releases rather than the rasfw policy. As an example I cite rasfwr-j, perhaps the canonical "author-specialized rasfw subgroup". Spoiler protection operates there for perhaps a month following each new release, after which point it is assumed that those reading the group have acquired and read the latest. Any other policy will tend to stifle discussion of the latest works. > Remember, lots of people will find the list after having just found > the books and read the first few. Or maybe the most recent three > instead. Or something. This simply indicates that it is impossible to provide protection >from spoilers to everyone. Those who have not read everything available need to accept a risk of spoilage if they choose to participate in discussions about the work -- for that very reason I tend to be very careful what I read (on rasfw or elsewhere) about a given book or series if I intend to read it later. There is a short window of time after the release of a book when it is feasible to say "This particular book needs spoiler protection, because a significant number of people have not had the chance to read it." Trying to extend that to ALL books being discussed renders it pointless -- if all discussion must have spoiler warnings, just put a great big spoiler warning in the rules and be done with it. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org)