About spoilers

[Lovux The Great]

We all can agree that Get Backers is a fantastic manga, right? One of the things I like most about it is how it is a real roller-coaster with loads of surprises and “aha!” moments every so often. You can never be too sure what’s going to happen on the next page.

… So how fun do you think it is to go to this forum and see that some dork has posted spoilers?

I know that it doesn’t matter for some people here on the board, as some has read the raws, or chapter summaries, or both. I respect that; by reading the spoilers, your urge to know what happens next will be satisfied, you’ll have your questions answered and you’ll have something to look forward to when you read it in the actual chapter. Nothing wrong with that.
But some of us here wish to read this amazing story without knowing beforehand what is going to happen. Get Backers has new plot twists around every corner and knowing them beforehand will dull the experience. The thing about a plot twist is that it TWISTS the plot in a direction you didn’t expect. If you were expecting it, the whole point about the plot twist is ruined.

The best thing to prevent spoilers would be to hide them under spoiler tags like they do on many other forums, but I do suspect that a spoiler tag function is not compatible with this forum’s encoding, right?
Another idea I had was the possibility of installing a text colour that matches the post’s background colour, but considering how the colour shifts between two nuances every second post, that doesn’t seem like a too good idea. Unless you go for both nuances and you’ll have to figure out yourself what colour it must be…

I think we need a spoiler policy. Of course, everyone’s got their own idea about what a “spoiler” exactly is. For some, it’s how a series end, for others, it can be just a name of a character. But I think the definition given by Midou in another thread should serve as a good example for us to follow:

For SPOILER writers:
So what exactly is a Spoiler? In this instance, any information(critical or otherwise) from chapters which has not yet been translated into English and released, is a Spoiler. If you've roughly gone through the RAWS and know how the manga shapes up, then good for you. Just don't give out that information!!

I’d really like to know everybody's opinion on this subject. That way, we can discuss and reach a conclusion that pleases as many members as possible.

[Lin]

I just saw a spoiler today -- and I wrote to an admin about it.  While I personally don't mind spoilers, I know they are upsetting to other people who don't want to know what's coming until it happens.  I think it's very important to have a policy about spoilers, and I agree with the definition that Midou gives.

There are boards where you can hide your spoilers under tags or by using the different color text method, but the fact remains, the spoilers are still there and people can sometimes see them by accident.  But having something like that might make people think twice about posting something that will spoil other readers.  For this forum especially, I think it's very important not to allow spoilers, because the story is so amazing as it develops -- what fun is that for people to find out something ahead of time and out of context?  As I said, I'm the kind who likes to look ahead if that's possible, and know what's coming, but I appreciate the desire to remain unspoiled that other people have, and I want to protect that right, as well.

Having the mods go through and edit out spoilers is good -- but if they don't catch them soon enough, that's a problem.  Hopefully there will be more discussion on this and we can come up with a good way of dealing with it -- before the next time there is a spoiler!   

[Logan]

Just a little question... the spoiler is still here? i will have to pay attention to everything  read? to fear for my spirit everytime i open a post? shaking my eyes in a just to be sure i will not be able to read the next post?

[Lovux The Great]

Carabin: No, it's not. Thankfully the idiotic post was deleted, by a mod/admin, I suppose.

Lin: Indeed, the spoilers will be there, but at least you'll have to choose for yourself if you want to see it or not. If you fall for the temptation, it'll be your own fault. But accidents aren't fun either, and it's not fair to be spoiled about major plot revealations just because you did a mistake. The current way of trusting the mods/admins to delete spoileriffic posts actually worries me - mostly because the staff isn't terribly active here and a disrespectful member could easily troll the forum by post spoilers everywhere, and the posts would be there for several days if the staff don't log in and do something about it.

Yet another idea I thought of is if we could have a subsection in the "Get Backers Manga Discussion Board", called something like "The Spoiler Area" in which you discuss facts that haven't been revealed in the manga at this point. If possible, the topics should be "hidden" in a sense that you can't see them unless you go to the spoiler subsection itself... know what I mean? So that we don't get spoilers from the titles of the topics that were recently posted in. Since it seems like we can't have tags, it'll be easy to have a spoiler policy as simple as "Don't post [manga] spoilers ANYWHERE outside The Spoiler Area, PERIOD".

Shame that this forum isn't too active, I DO want to know what other members think about this subject, not to mention I want to hear what the staff has to say.

[Logan]

im agry with you on the spoiler part!! good luck for the staff to create the part

[Shisui]

Well, I'm pretty sure the bg color for the Quote box is always the same, so you could write spoilers in quote tags and change the text color like this:

Code:

[quote][color=#717171]spoiler text[/color][/quote]

Blah blah blah Ban's a martian from hell!!!!

The only problem is making sure everyone knows to do that. Is there a way to make a new tag that does it automatically? I dunno. I'm not an admin.

[glue]

Well, according to the law of Murphy even if you make a rule "no spoiler allowed" it's still fairly certain that someone new to the forum (and without the patience to read the rules) from time to time will post some spoiler anyway. 
I would stick to the idea of creating a forum section dedicated to spoilers (preferibly put on top so that anyone can see it), or to add a spoiler button (recognizable with a biohazard or even better a yellow/black nuclear sign) that, as a result, make appear a text area with the word "Warning!", "Spoiler ahead!", "Click at your own risk" or something like that.

[somehow_here]

I totally agree there should be some system for spoilers. I know I hate when someone  spoils what I am reading or watching! In my case, it can't helped when I am cleaner of series...but other people can be saved the grief then they should. It is good idea that we should reserve a color for spoilers, but I think it might attract people attention to instead. It is best solution to problem that we have at the moment...since this board doesn't have function for spoiler since it is free! We just need to include in rules.

As for spoiler section, it is wonderful idea...but sometimes people really want to talk about it in different section since people do jump around. Maybe we should just create a hyperlink of spoiler on discussion thread to the spoiler thread in those situations. It is pretty easily to do. Basically:

Code:

[url=(your spoiler address for spoiler)] spoiler [/url]

[Vent the North]

Well, I'm pretty sure the bg color for the Quote box is always the same, so you could write spoilers in quote tags and change the text color like this:

Code:

[quote][color=#717171]spoiler text[/color][/quote]

Blah blah blah Ban's a martian from hell!!!!

That looks like it will work fairly well. I guess I could add that to a section to show how the spoiler system works.

The only problem is making sure everyone knows to do that. Is there a way to make a new tag that does it automatically? I dunno. I'm not an admin.

If I could do that then I would have done it a very long time ago. Unfortunately, SMF forums are fairly limited in what they can do.