This wiki is a XML full dump clone of "Heroes Wiki", the main wiki about the Heroes saga that has been shut down permanently since June 1, 2020. The purpose of this wiki is to keep online an exhaustive and accurate database about the franchise.
Template talk:Spoilertext
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
So are we keeping this template? Admin seemed to suggest he didn't want it... I don't think it's a good idea, either. Too much potential for abuse.--MiamiVolts (talk) 20:28, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- I for one don't see the big deal with this (or really, template:spoilertext --this one's pretty harmless) getting used on talk pages. How is it any worse than what happens now, where people freely post spoilery information in discussions? This happens all the time--scarcely an episode goes by without somebody discussing, say, the "next on Heroes" preview or the upcoming episode clips or other spoilers which seem to be coming to fruition on the epsiode's talk page--and they are, to the best of my knowledge, never removed from the talk pages. I've certainly never removed one for containing spoiler information because I've never given a single thought to spoiler information in talkspace, just in the article space. Even if someone's browser doesn't support this, we're still better off than we are right now, in that some spoilers are hidden for some users. It seems like a lot of sound and fury over something that's, at worst, a slight improvement over the current state of affairs.--Hardvice (talk) 21:27, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- No, you're missing my point. Actually, I just thought up a second point: 1) This black text is easy to hide spoiler info with, which is great, but it also makes it hard to read that text unless you edit the article or grab it with your mouse to highlight it. This makes it a pain in the butt to patrol, and hence a liability, imho. You might want to discuss that on the administrators portal, as I think Admin may have been hinting at this. Since this is a wiki and not a forum, search engines may treat this the same as sites who black-out both the text and background of the entire page (btw, that's now possible with this template...). 2) This is not good for screenreaders. For those people who read the site which are visually impaired or simply like to listen to the site with a screenreader, masking the text this way is worse than using a collapsed table, because at least a collapsed table always has a header row to note there's some text there. I don't always design purposely for the visually impaired, but I try to keep them in mind.--MiamiVolts (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- I still don't see any way in which it's worse than what we have now. People with screen readers are currently subjected to spoilers on talk pages; they'll still be subjected to spoilers on talk pages with this. The text is not a hidden element -- screen readers will still read it. Difference pages are used to patrol edits; they show the text, not the formatting. Misuse of this template can be dealt with just like misuse of any template, many of which could do far worse damage than just blacking out a page. This doesn't do anything a reader couldn't do with CSS anyway, except that it doesn't need to be highlighted to reveal, just hovered. Mountains out of a molehill, start to finish.--Hardvice (talk) 22:08, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- It doesn't need to be highlighted to reveal? Hmm, it's not working correctly for me, then. Is it possible to do something like IMDb where instead of a black-background a wallpapered image saying "spoiler" covers the text instead? That at least looks somewhat different than a newspaper edited by a government agency. LOL.--MiamiVolts (talk) 22:17, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- You may need to reload around your cache to get the updated common.css. It works for me in Opera, IE, FF, and Safari, and I confirmed that the text is still readable to screenreaders using Lynx. AS for using an image instead of a BG color: probably possible, but we'd need to use background-image instead of background-color, and we'd need to set the z-index to hide it behind the image (which would make any links unclickable until the box is hovered)--right now, the text prints on top of the bg-color, but since they match, it just blends in. The real problem is that background-image has a habit of working/stretching/filling poorly with inline elements like <span>, so we might need to switch it to a block-level element like <div>, which would likely be a page formatting disaster.--Hardvice (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- IMDb uses a span tag to do it as a wallpaper, and it works for me in IE6 on IMDb, but on this Wiki I just cleared my cache and cookies and reloaded the page and it is still not working. In Mozilla, it worked as soon as I opened it, though. Hrm. IMDb uses: [span class="spoiler" onmouseover="this.className='spoiler hover'" onmouseout="this.className='spoiler'"][span]test[/span][/span]--MiamiVolts (talk) 22:39, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- Yeah, they've gone with onmouseover JS instead of the :hover CSS pseudoclass.--Hardvice (talk) 23:01, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- Do you know where the CSS would be stored locally for IE6? Maybe I need to manually delete it in Windows Explorer?--MiamiVolts (talk) 23:05, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- Yeah, they've gone with onmouseover JS instead of the :hover CSS pseudoclass.--Hardvice (talk) 23:01, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- IMDb uses a span tag to do it as a wallpaper, and it works for me in IE6 on IMDb, but on this Wiki I just cleared my cache and cookies and reloaded the page and it is still not working. In Mozilla, it worked as soon as I opened it, though. Hrm. IMDb uses: [span class="spoiler" onmouseover="this.className='spoiler hover'" onmouseout="this.className='spoiler'"][span]test[/span][/span]--MiamiVolts (talk) 22:39, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- You may need to reload around your cache to get the updated common.css. It works for me in Opera, IE, FF, and Safari, and I confirmed that the text is still readable to screenreaders using Lynx. AS for using an image instead of a BG color: probably possible, but we'd need to use background-image instead of background-color, and we'd need to set the z-index to hide it behind the image (which would make any links unclickable until the box is hovered)--right now, the text prints on top of the bg-color, but since they match, it just blends in. The real problem is that background-image has a habit of working/stretching/filling poorly with inline elements like <span>, so we might need to switch it to a block-level element like <div>, which would likely be a page formatting disaster.--Hardvice (talk) 22:27, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- It doesn't need to be highlighted to reveal? Hmm, it's not working correctly for me, then. Is it possible to do something like IMDb where instead of a black-background a wallpapered image saying "spoiler" covers the text instead? That at least looks somewhat different than a newspaper edited by a government agency. LOL.--MiamiVolts (talk) 22:17, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- I still don't see any way in which it's worse than what we have now. People with screen readers are currently subjected to spoilers on talk pages; they'll still be subjected to spoilers on talk pages with this. The text is not a hidden element -- screen readers will still read it. Difference pages are used to patrol edits; they show the text, not the formatting. Misuse of this template can be dealt with just like misuse of any template, many of which could do far worse damage than just blacking out a page. This doesn't do anything a reader couldn't do with CSS anyway, except that it doesn't need to be highlighted to reveal, just hovered. Mountains out of a molehill, start to finish.--Hardvice (talk) 22:08, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- No, you're missing my point. Actually, I just thought up a second point: 1) This black text is easy to hide spoiler info with, which is great, but it also makes it hard to read that text unless you edit the article or grab it with your mouse to highlight it. This makes it a pain in the butt to patrol, and hence a liability, imho. You might want to discuss that on the administrators portal, as I think Admin may have been hinting at this. Since this is a wiki and not a forum, search engines may treat this the same as sites who black-out both the text and background of the entire page (btw, that's now possible with this template...). 2) This is not good for screenreaders. For those people who read the site which are visually impaired or simply like to listen to the site with a screenreader, masking the text this way is worse than using a collapsed table, because at least a collapsed table always has a header row to note there's some text there. I don't always design purposely for the visually impaired, but I try to keep them in mind.--MiamiVolts (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- I'm not opposed to this template at all. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 23:35, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- Hardvice, I don't know what you mean by "worse than what we have now." The policy is that spoiler information does not get put on main articles or their talk pages, only on pages in the Spoiler or Spoiler talk namespace. If we are leaving spoiler information on talk pages currently, this needs to change. Spoiler information should ONLY be on spoiler pages. There's no reason people avoiding spoilers should be required to avoid the standard talk pages as well. This template is essentially a hack that is providing an excuse for not putting the information on a Spoiler page where it belongs. When someone wants to reference spoiler information on a non-spoiler talk page, the proper method is to include a link to the spoiler page, not trying to obfuscate the spoiler text on the talk page itself. Aside from being contrary to the reason for the separate spoiler namespaces, it causes issues for browsers which do not honor the formatting as well as for any other tool being used to search through non-spoiler content (for instance I suspect it may return undesirable results using the MediaWiki default search which purposely excludes spoiler namespaces). (Admin 23:38, 10 November 2007 (EST))
- That's fine. Then we really ought to start enforcing the policy against spoilers in talk pages. There are a ton of them. Powers talk pages say things like "well, in the preview for next week's episode..." Episode talk pages say things like "it looks like such-and-such will actually be happening to so-and-so like the spoilers said." Lots of article talk pages say things like "according to the clips from next week's episode..." If it's a rule, then we're doing a lousy job of enforcing it.--Hardvice (talk) 23:56, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- I think at the very least we could try to use judgment to decide what's spoilerish and not if we don't just make a blanket statement that anything remotely spoilerish must be on the spoiler pages. Perhaps saying "This is answered in episode..." is alright whereas outright giving the answer is considered a spoiler. Similar to how we don't consider names of characters to be spoilers since they don't actually spoil the plot. Just an idea... I'm not sure if even that example I just gave would be too spoilery. I haven't personally come across spoiler information in talk pages, but I've probably just been lucky. I think there's an expectation that talk pages shouldn't include spoilers since we have clearly named namespaces for spoilers and I'd hate to see people upset about coming across spoilers by accident. (Admin 00:07, 11 November 2007 (EST))
- Maybe I won't be doing my "job" as an administrator, but I really don't want to have to move people's comments off mainspace talk pages and then go and find the proper spoiler page and add the comment there, along with a link to the proper page. If people want to obscure the text, I think that does its purpose. Either that, or people can just put a general "Okay, I heard a spoiler the other day" or "Warning: spoilers ahead" preface. That might sound lazy of me, but I really don't want to enforce a rule about spoilers on talk pages. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 00:12, 11 November 2007 (EST)
- You're free to revert it if you'd like. We enforce the spoiler policy on main articles, it should also be enforced on talk pages. Granted, everyone's free to enforce the policies they'd like as long as no one gets reverted for actually enforcing it. There aren't any rules that people have to do extra work they don't want to. :) (Admin 00:15, 11 November 2007 (EST))
- That's fine. Then we really ought to start enforcing the policy against spoilers in talk pages. There are a ton of them. Powers talk pages say things like "well, in the preview for next week's episode..." Episode talk pages say things like "it looks like such-and-such will actually be happening to so-and-so like the spoilers said." Lots of article talk pages say things like "according to the clips from next week's episode..." If it's a rule, then we're doing a lousy job of enforcing it.--Hardvice (talk) 23:56, 10 November 2007 (EST)
- Hardvice, I don't know what you mean by "worse than what we have now." The policy is that spoiler information does not get put on main articles or their talk pages, only on pages in the Spoiler or Spoiler talk namespace. If we are leaving spoiler information on talk pages currently, this needs to change. Spoiler information should ONLY be on spoiler pages. There's no reason people avoiding spoilers should be required to avoid the standard talk pages as well. This template is essentially a hack that is providing an excuse for not putting the information on a Spoiler page where it belongs. When someone wants to reference spoiler information on a non-spoiler talk page, the proper method is to include a link to the spoiler page, not trying to obfuscate the spoiler text on the talk page itself. Aside from being contrary to the reason for the separate spoiler namespaces, it causes issues for browsers which do not honor the formatting as well as for any other tool being used to search through non-spoiler content (for instance I suspect it may return undesirable results using the MediaWiki default search which purposely excludes spoiler namespaces). (Admin 23:38, 10 November 2007 (EST))
Suggestion
Perhaps since Ryan has changed his mind and Hardvice is no longer around, we should consider restricting this template's usage to certain namespaces such that it only works in the spoiler, spoiler talk, user and user talk namespaces.--MiamiVolts (talk) 15:53, 10 February 2009 (EST)
- One of my issues with this template has always been that it's very unprofessional in my opinion. Blacking out text is something, in my opinion, more suited for forums and other less professional sites. I'd rather see it go away entirely. Restricting it to certain namespaces may in fact make it more confusing because people will expect it to work everywhere. If it's used on any other page by mistake it will have to do something and I think any "something" would be along the same lines as what it currently does. It also doesn't correct the issue that without exception spoiler information must be on a spoiler page. Even user and user talk pages are not permitted. As far as using it on spoiler articles it shouldn't matter too much because people already expect spoilers there. If it's used to black out extreme spoilers then it becomes a bit subjective to determine what's significant enough to be blacked out... plus it goes back to my opinion that blacking out text on a reference site like this is amateurish and unprofessional. (Admin 16:05, 10 February 2009 (EST))
- Well, I'm still all for getting rid of it entirely as well. This is my suggestion in case that doesn't happen. See above thread for my reasons for getting rid of it.--MiamiVolts (talk) 16:09, 10 February 2009 (EST)
- I don't mind getting rid of it. It would mean that a bunch of talk pages that use the template would need to be fixed, but that's not too big a deal. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2009 (EST)
- So then, is this happening?--Crazylicious 19:02, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- Yeah, looks like it is going to get deleted. If you want to help speed up the process, you can eliminating all the uses of it. Just remember to clip any spoiler text contained therein.--MiamiVolts (talk) 19:21, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- The other thing that we might want to consider is changing it to print a big warning that spoilers only belong on spoiler pages. Something like this... -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 20:09, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- Sounds reasonable, though where would we use that warning?--MiamiVolts (talk) 23:53, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- We would remove the template's use from everywhere. Then the warning would only show up if somebody tried to use the template in the future, rather than creating a red link for a template that doesn't exist. Sort of the same way template:GNcharacternav works. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 01:04, 12 February 2009 (EST)
- Sounds reasonable, though where would we use that warning?--MiamiVolts (talk) 23:53, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- The other thing that we might want to consider is changing it to print a big warning that spoilers only belong on spoiler pages. Something like this... -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 20:09, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- Yeah, looks like it is going to get deleted. If you want to help speed up the process, you can eliminating all the uses of it. Just remember to clip any spoiler text contained therein.--MiamiVolts (talk) 19:21, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- So then, is this happening?--Crazylicious 19:02, 11 February 2009 (EST)
- I don't mind getting rid of it. It would mean that a bunch of talk pages that use the template would need to be fixed, but that's not too big a deal. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2009 (EST)
- Well, I'm still all for getting rid of it entirely as well. This is my suggestion in case that doesn't happen. See above thread for my reasons for getting rid of it.--MiamiVolts (talk) 16:09, 10 February 2009 (EST)