Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

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VorpalKitten
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Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

Post by VorpalKitten »

If there is such a rule, how would one go about reporting a spoilery review?

Okkervil
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Re: Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

Post by Okkervil »

VorpalSmiles wrote:If there is such a rule, how would one go about reporting a spoilery review?

I don't think so. There are certainly lots of reviews with spoilers on the site. I don't personally have too much of an issue with them in most circumstances as I try not to read reviews before watching, but understand how they can annoy.

I've always thought a good addition to the mini-reviews would be a spoiler tick button. That way if you write a review with potential spoilers it could be marked as such on the rankings/review lists and people can easily skip over them. A functionality then could also be added to filter out spoiler reviews completely.

mattorama12
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Re: Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

Post by mattorama12 »

Okkervil wrote:I've always thought a good addition to the mini-reviews would be a spoiler tick button. That way if you write a review with potential spoilers it could be marked as such on the rankings/review lists and people can easily skip over them. A functionality then could also be added to filter out spoiler reviews completely.


That's a great idea. The only problem is implementation now that thousands (millions?) of mini-reviews already exist on the site. Probably the better solution would be to make the spoiler tag the default (and applied to everything that's already been written), with the option for the user to affirmatively state no spoilers. This would also likely lead to many fewer instances of false-negatives, where a person maybe added a spoiler to the review and didn't think to tag it.

TheDenizen
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Re: Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

Post by TheDenizen »

Great ideas, but implementation of a spoiler tag is all but impossible. What do you do about the inactive users who have nonetheless rated and reviewed hundreds of movies? Ignore/hide all their reviews indiscriminately?

While there is no hard and fast rule against it, posting spoilers in a review is kind of a dick move. However, getting butthurt enough about having a movie spoiled for you that you want to report the offender to site admins is similarly dick-ish. On the rare occasions when I do have spoilers in a review, I type **SPOILER ALERT** at the start of the text to warn off people who might be reading before watching.

It seems like the best solution to me. That, or simply not reading reviews of a movie before you watch it.

mattorama12
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Re: Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

Post by mattorama12 »

TheDenizen wrote:What do you do about the inactive users who have nonetheless rated and reviewed hundreds of movies? Ignore/hide all their reviews indiscriminately?


The tag wouldn't ignore/hide their reviews. It'd just be a tag that users can utilize to filter reviews if they're looking at a movie they haven't seen yet. For that reason, I'd also recommend that showing all reviews be the default, but that you could select "hide reviews with spoilers" or something.

While there is no hard and fast rule against it, posting spoilers in a review is kind of a dick move. However, getting butthurt enough about having a movie spoiled for you that you want to report the offender to site admins is similarly dick-ish. On the rare occasions when I do have spoilers in a review, I type **SPOILER ALERT** at the start of the text to warn off people who might be reading before watching.


I agree with you and appreciate when you or others type that--unfortunately not everybody does give a warning. I tend to avoid reviews before I've seen a movie...but it'd be nice to be able to look at the reviews that I know don't contain any spoilers to help me decide if something is worth viewing.

And yes, people on either side of this shouldn't be getting butthurt at all.

Ocelot
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Re: Is there a rule here against spoilers in reviews?

Post by Ocelot »

I came in here to post no, but thinking about it spoilers are basically essential in full reviews, but mini-reviews are basically an Ebertian "see it or don't" it terms of depth. But mini-reviews are often the best as jokes, and those jokes are often the best when spoilery.

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