Prosfic Spoilers - up for discussion again - with a shiny new idea...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

ladymeander contacted me last night with what I think's a fabulous idea to help solve the issue of those-who-want-spoilers vs those-who-don't-want-spoilers, and I said I'd post about it today and see what other people thought. So...

What about setting up a Pros comm dedicated to spoilers for Prosfic? Prosficspoilers could be a place where anyone could go and find the spoiler information they needed. People who don't want spoiler information simply wouldn't go there! It could be used from CI5hq or any other comm, and even by people reading stories on the Circuit Archive, Hatstand, ProsLib or anywhere else that they worried didn't give them enough spoiler information.

People/contributors would simply post their spoiler information at the comm however they want to, and then tag the entry with the title of the story. The tags list would then show a long list of stories with spoiler information and simply clicking the title would bring that information up.

It would keep headers/trailers at all the Pros comms who wanted to use them nice and simple (no worrying about how to do coding of any kind):

Title:
Author:
Pairing: (the one piece of extra information that all but 2/c100 people polled said they wanted - and those 2 people didn't even care what fandom they were reading in *g*)
Story Information: Prosficspoilers [comm link]

And it could be used for new fic as well as reviews/recs, and also for stories where the authors/reccers don't believe in spoilers. For example, I'll never include spoiler information of any kind with one of my stories, but people who wanted that information could post it themselves over at Prosficspoilers and it could be found there.

What do you reckon? I can't believe no one's thought of it before! If people like the idea, then I could set up the comm with the appropriate settings, and then hand it over to anyone who volunteers to be a mod, and it'd be away - no muss, no fuss... *g*

Comments

[firlefanzine.livejournal.com]

No, please do it for me - I'd rather change things than work it out completely for myself, for I've never done it with a comm.

But shouldn't we wait for other opinions?

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Okay, no worries - that's how I figured it all out too, Josey made the comms, and I went from there. *g*

We should and will wait for other opinions, but I'm guessing that if you think it's a good idea, then probably other spoiler-wanters will as well... *g* I did think that I'd see what people thought about the idea, and then maybe put up a poll between the different spoiler-techniques to see what people would prefer... But I think that might actually make it more complicated than it needs to be, unless anyone comes up with ideas why a spoiler comm and link from fic/rec headers wouldn't work... I can't think of any though - clever ladymeander! *g*

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

Well, FWIW you have mine - I think it's an excellent idea! If you create the comm then those that want it will join ("if you build it, they will come" *g*). Then it's up to the other comms to decide if they are going to adopt that method of referencing.

I have the tiniest niggle that existence of a reference to a 'spoiler' comm might constitute a spoiler in itself, but if the scope of entries at the comm is broad enough, specific 'warnings' should disappear into the mix. For example I don't think anyone blinks twice at the Hatstand announcements that a story appears in a story list (cos these included various types of AU, BDSM, Christmas stories, crossovers as well as the more typically 'warned' for death or rape).

Of course this might not be exactly what you were thinking...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Ah, see I just thought that the inclusion of a link to the comm would go in every header (at CI5hq and Dialj) at least - people who wanted would click on the link and there may or may not be spoilers there for each fic. But it wouldn't actually constitute a spoiler itself, cos it would be user in the header whether or not there were spoilers - and it'd just be a link to the comm, not to the individual fic. Cos yeah, using it just for stories with spoilers would be my old complaint of spoiling-by-saying-there-were-spoilers... *g*

The other thing that worried me was that if people joined then they'd see every spoiler that was posted - but actually they could Join the comm, but not Watch it and then the posts wouldn't come up in their flists. I'll put that in the first post/user info so that people know they can do that...

But yeay ladymeander, I think it's an excellent idea too! *g*

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

I just thought that the inclusion of a link to the comm would go in every header (at CI5hq and Dialj) at least

Thinking about the tags limitation - 2,000 for paid/permanent accounts - if applied to individual story titles would get used up eventually, maybe in a couple of years.

OK, I see what you mean about linking to the comm itself.

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

The problem I see is that if it's an automatic inclusion people might expect the comm mod(s) to list and tag appropriately - which means they have to read the fic to do it... probably need more than one mod, and not all from the 'need warning' group of readers.

Also, absence of a story from the warning comm list might not mean there are no warnings for the story:P

It's still a very good idea, thanks due to ladymeander, and I'm sure these things can be worked out.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Well someone would have to have read the fic and then post the spoilers to the Prosficspoiler comm - but the onus would be on people who want spoilers then, rather than expecting everyone else to learn html coding to do black-on-black, or to be spoiled when they don't want to be. How they do that would be completely up to them - maybe by posting spoilers for any fic they've already read, to start off with, maybe by asking the reccer of a fic what the story is and then posting, maybe by reading the end of upcoming fics on the Reading Room list themselves first - any one of a zillion ways. But the beauty would be that you could have dozens of people sharing the workload - including people who were happy to read sad fic, but didn't mind being spoiled either.

and not all from the 'need warning' group of readers
Why not? All they'd need to do, if there was a fic that they were all unsure/unfamiliar with, would be to ask a reccer/author about it. And authors who don't mind spoilers could be encouraged to do a quick post to the comm with any spoilers/warnings for their fic.

Also, absence of a story from the warning comm list might not mean there are no warnings for the story:P
No, but that's up to the comm to rectify - and that's the same situation now, for any post/story - absence of a warning doesn't mean that someone might not think there should be one. But the people in charge of that would be the people who want the warnings.

ETA - did you cross out the tag issue cos you decided it was no longer an issue? It's a good point - the way around it might be to duplicate the comm once the tag limit was reached (unless they asked for donors each year to make it a paid comm) - Prosficspoilers2. No solution to this issue is going to be perfect, and I think running out of tags is solvable...

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

did you cross out the tag issue cos you decided it was no longer an issue?

Yeah -it's an unnecessary complication at this stage. I think there's a need for the comm & would be happy for Firle to go ahead and do it whatever way she thinks fit!