Template talk:Spoiler

proposed change
Hi, I've been experimenting with a proposed change to the spoiler and endspoiler templates. See User:Jdowland/spoilers for an example: essentially, a variant where you can specify a name for a given spoiler-block, and skip over it. I decided to do this after reading one too many articles (not all on the doom wiki) where a spoiler template is present at the top of the article, and it's a long article, so you have to carefully skim-read to find the end spoiler. What do you think? -- Jdowland 11:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I suspect that putting the template at the top is a workaround: usually, the spoiler itself is only one or two sentences long, so if the warning is right next to it, people who read with any velocity (e.g. the SF/gamer/programmer types who tend to edit wikis) often see the spoiler and the warning at the same time. Whatever global change we make should avoid reintroducing that problem; how would your method work for articles which will never be longer than one page (like the ones about the Doom 3 scientists), or for the proposed Strife characters article, which would contain many short paragraphs at one spoiler sentence per paragraph?


 * My favorite spoiler warnings are of the "mouseover" type (though that also may carry implementation issues, and certainly fails in text-based browsers). I believe, however, that our spoiler warnings are currently somewhat overused &mdash; the reader really ought to know in advance that game walkthroughs include spoilers &mdash; and that we should first ask ourselves if the remaining few cases (such as Doom movie) are sufficiently broken that a careful revision to the template is necessary.    Ryan W 12:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Addendum about "mouseover" spoiler warnings: it has just occurred to me that users of text-based browsers already see so much markup source (sidebars, ads, navboxes &mdash; and our layout is hardly one of the more heavily customized) that one extra  tag on a given page is unlikely to drive them away.  Also, if MediaWiki doesn't provide a "magic word" to select the background color in the reader's current skin, then it certainly should.  I say we start using them.    Ryan W 04:59, 21 October 2007 (UTC)