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)


 * Further addendum: Encyclopedia Gamia demonstrates the use of javascript for hiding information (in that case porn, but it could also be used for a spoiler).   Ryan W 19:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no idea what you mean by a mouseover spoiler warning, unless that Encyclopedia Gamia thing was one. Could you link to an example or explain how it works?


 * I actually dislike that javascript hide thing, mostly because forcing users to click things to show hidden information isn't very reader friendly IMO.


 * Unless the mouseover thing is pure awesomeness, I'd prefer Jdowland's warning system, combined with a general warning like "This article contains spoilers" shown at the top of each article that includes spoilers. -- Janizdreg 01:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)


 * By "mouseover" I mean: the text in the spoiler paragraph is the same color as the page background, so it is invisible until the user clicks-and-drags across it. I first saw this in 1997 on the old Corona Coming Attractions site.


 * Wikia's skin/css system is very complicated and I don't know much about it, so it may well be that mouseover spoilers are too hard to implement, and we'll need to agree on another convention. (I stand by my statement concerning overuse, however.)    Ryan W 03:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Do you mean something like the line below? The font and background colours are the same. This seems easy to implement, but if the spoiler colour is light grey like this, then it’ll look particularly ugly on dark backgrounds. Would its appearance on custom skins be much of a problem? —Shidou 11:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's exactly the question! In the above, you hardcoded the color as  #f0f0f0 .  Can the color instead be set to "background color of whatever skin is currently being viewed"?    Ryan W 01:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I don’t think it’s possible, but I don’t see the spoiler box appearance on custom skins as a good reason to not implement it. As long as users know it’s a spoiler box and know how to read the text within it, it’s fine with me.  For what it’s worth, I expect that the vast majority of users (including anons) uses the default skin. —Shidou 02:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, it's fine with me too (and I also use the default skin). I'd just as soon have one fewer giant conversation that only affects 3 articles, but the amount of skin-related traffic on the listserv has made me wary of anything involving colors.  People have actually stopped working on this wiki because they didn't like our choice of skins (not recently though).    Ryan W 02:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment:  The javascript extension for spoilers is described more fully at the Tibia Wiki. Ryan W 15:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)