8 réponses à ce sujet

[Magic Zarim]

This forum does not offer any support to mark certain parts of a post as spoiler. Consious people try to do something like "warning, spoiler ahead" etc but that goes only so far.

Here is an example of how the forum can be greatly improved. Watch the following link. It brings you to the FEAR2 forums (which is a game I own) and for your pleasure I posted up a demo post: http://www.projector...ead.php?t=10557

Now, click the black bar and see what happens. The text is enclosed by a simple

Spoiler

 

set of tags. This would add great value and would make the forums, regardless of which section, much more spoiler-safe provided people remain consious. If you would add a "Spoiler" button to the post editor much like the "Quote" button, it's only a matter of time for people to start using it. Another incentive for them to use it is to actually see it working too: "Hey I want to hide my spoilers too! How do I do that?".

*Points finger at general direction of the web office*.. "You!"   "Make it happen..."

[LadySeryn]

I agree. This would be a great addition.



Personally, I prefer the approach used on the Steam forums, where the spoiler is indented and separated from the rest of the post, much like a quote, and the text appears only when you hover your mouse over the text. That way, you can hide the text again quickly if you start to read the spoiler and realize that you really don't want to read any more.



It also helps encourage people to put entire paragraphs in spoiler tags, rather than just putting key words in the tag. Sometimes people don't realize that just blanking out certain words can still spoil things if the hidden words are easy enough to guess. (ex: "[SPOILER] had a little [SPOILER] whose fleece was white as snow.")

[Magic Zarim]

Just a little bump so this won't go unnoticed

[Selene Moonsong]

Since they already have forums where spoilers are permitted, I don't see that they really need a spoiler tag. Spoilers should not be posted to any other forum, with the exception of maybe the tech forums.

These forums are much like the NWN forums on the BioBoards, where spoilers are supposed to be limited to the specific and appropriate topics, which also assumes the Tech Support forums where game information is sometimes needed.

The forums where spoilers are permitted are clearly marked as such, both here and on the BioBoard forums, and they also state not to place a spoiler indication in the subject of a post; spoilers are automatically assumed in the spoiler topics, so no need of tags or subject line.

Modifié par Selene Moonsong, 12 janvier 2010 - 02:28 .

[LadySeryn]

The advantage of spoiler tags, even if spoilers have an entire forum of their own, is that it is the reader that decides if they want to see the information, not the poster (if the tags are used properly).  It means you might actually be able to wander into a spoiler forum and not find out the ending of the game by accident when you were just trying to get help with a specific quest (which is off-topic in the main forum due to the spoiler nature of your question).

It also gives moderators another option when faced with a thread containing spoilers that's in the wrong forum.  Instead of having to delete posts or move them to a different forum, they could simply add spoiler tags around the appropriate post.

They can also be used when discussing spoilers for things outside DA:O.  For example, when discussing the Dragon Age novels, or when comparing DA:O to another game, you could put spoiler tags around the details of the novel or the plot of the other game so that people who haven't read those (but have played DA:O) don't have the plot of the novels/other game ruined just because they wandered into a forum where DA:O spoilers were supposed to be permitted.

And keeping the non-spoiler forum completely spoiler-free is almost impossible.  Sometimes a good conversation will wander, and what started as a good non-spoiler conversation starts to become more and more full of spoilers as the conversation unfolds.  The thread thanking the writers for their hard work in the main forum recently is a great example.  It started as a nice "Aren't the writers great!?" thread, and evolved into a "Let's ask Mr. Gaider a bunch of obscure lore questions" thread, which naturally resulted in some spoilers.  Spoilers that could have easily been hidden without derailing the conversation or moving a great thread out of the forum where it was started if the system supported spoiler tags.

[Selene Moonsong]

LadySeryn wrote...

The advantage of spoiler tags, even if spoilers have an entire forum of their own, is that it is the reader that decides if they want to see the information, not the poster (if the tags are used properly).  It means you might actually be able to wander into a spoiler forum and not find out the ending of the game by accident when you were just trying to get help with a specific quest (which is off-topic in the main forum due to the spoiler nature of your question).

It also gives moderators another option when faced with a thread containing spoilers that's in the wrong forum.  Instead of having to delete posts or move them to a different forum, they could simply add spoiler tags around the appropriate post.

I fail to see the advantage you suggest, from a BioBoards Moderator perspective, since I am a Moderator for the NWN 2 forums on the BioBoards and have been for well over 3 years now. It is very simple, spoilers belong in the appropriate spoiler forums, not in any other forum. Therefore, a special tag to identify spoilers simply are not needed and are an unnecessary expense on any forum.

They can also be used when discussing spoilers for things outside DA:O.  For example, when discussing the Dragon Age novels, or when comparing DA:O to another game, you could put spoiler tags around the details of the novel or the plot of the other game so that people who haven't read those (but have played DA:O) don't have the plot of the novels/other game ruined just because they wandered into a forum where DA:O spoilers were supposed to be permitted.

Such discussions would be rather off-topic, IMHO, more suitable for an off-topic forum. If the DA:O forums follow the same criteria as the BioBoards forums, then it would be an 'off-topic' discussion. Perhaps it would be more appropriate for special forums to be created.

And keeping the non-spoiler forum completely spoiler-free is almost impossible.  Sometimes a good conversation will wander, and what started as a good non-spoiler conversation starts to become more and more full of spoilers as the conversation unfolds.  The thread thanking the writers for their hard work in the main forum recently is a great example.  It started as a nice "Aren't the writers great!?" thread, and evolved into a "Let's ask Mr. Gaider a bunch of obscure lore questions" thread, which naturally resulted in some spoilers.  Spoilers that could have easily been hidden without derailing the conversation or moving a great thread out of the forum where it was started if the system supported spoiler tags.

Not impossible, but doable to a certain degree. Moderators are generally not BioWare employees and as such they often acquiesce to the posts made by developers, even when they may be in violation of their own forum rules.

Personally, I see no real value in the added expense of creating specific icons and headers to identify spoiler warnings, as such would lead to more spoilers being posted in the general topics than would be necessary. Besides, IMHO, in the end, such devices are more often abused than the spoilers presented in a given forum.

Modifié par Selene Moonsong, 17 janvier 2010 - 01:37 .

[LadySeryn]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

I fail to see the advantage you suggest, from a BioBoards Moderator perspective, since I am a Moderator for the NWN 2 forums on the BioBoards and have been for well over 3 years now. It is very simple, spoilers belong in the appropriate spoiler forums, not in any other forum. Therefore, a special tag to identify spoilers simply are not needed and are an unnecessary expense on any forum.

I fail to see how adding a tag that works similar to the existing quote tag adds any real "expense".  Yes, there is a small development cost, but the cost should be negligible given that the forums already have other tags like quote that function in an almost identical fashion.  And if you're referring to computational or bandwidth costs, it's a matter of a small javascript function for each quote, adding a few bytes to each page load and a small amount of processing which would mostly happen on the client anyway.

I agree with your other point though.  Spoilers belong in the correct forums.  No argument there.  But I do think that even in the spoiler forum, these types of tags would be useful.

Such discussions would be rather off-topic, IMHO, more suitable for an off-topic forum. If the DA:O forums follow the same criteria as the BioBoards forums, then it would be an 'off-topic' discussion. Perhaps it would be more appropriate for special forums to be created.

This is a matter of forum rules that I don't really want to debate, as that is not the point of this thread.  The point is that there are currently discussions going on about things other than the main game (such as the Dragon Age novels) on these forums, and regardless of whether you think they are on-topic or off-topic for the forum they are in, having a spoiler tag would be a much simpler solution than to set up a special forum specifically for each other topic (such as each novel) that is deemed to be closely related enough to Dragon Age or BioWare's other games to be considered on-topic for the site.  

Also, keep in mind that as you increase the number of forums, the usefulness of each individual forum decreases, as you spread your traffic across multiple disparate forums and reduce the total number of viewers that see each post.

Personally, I see no real value in the added expense of creating specific icons and headers to identify spoiler warnings, as such would lead to more spoilers being posted in the general topics than would be necessary. Besides, IMHO, in the end, such devices are more often abused than the spoilers presented in a given forum.

I was not suggesting special icons or headers or anything of the sort.  If you look at the suggestion that the OP made, or the way that spoilers are handled on the Steam forums as I suggested, they both amount to changing the colour of the spoiler section of text so that by default you cannot read the text (ie: black text on a black background).  When you mouse-over or click on the "hidden" text, the text becomes visible.

I fail to see how making your text harder to read would be abused, especially since it's only the matter of a simple click or mouse-over to make your text visible to anyone viewing the thread.

I agree it may encourage more posts with spoiler contents in the main forum, but having these type of posts wrapped in proper spoiler tags means that having them in the wrong forum would have less impact on people who don't want to read these spoilers.  And it does not preclude the moderators from moving the messages to the appropriate forum and/or locking the threads anyway.

Anyway, I think I've made my point, and it's ultimately up to the BioWare devs and moderators such as yourself to run these forums however they wish.  I just thought I would voice my support for the original poster's suggestion, as it is a feature of other forums that I frequent that I find rather useful, and have yet to see it be abused.

[DragonRageGT]

Every modern forum has it! Bump for support!

[ScepticMatt]

This has my support