[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

I'm very confident that you'll never convince the majority to not discuss spoilers at all.

So I think we should encourage people to use spoiler tags more often, and to totally free up the places where spoiler tags can be used. But I know the Moderators probably don't like that idea.

I don't like this idea because, as I said before, this is exactly the policy we had in the past (before I become a mod), and it was way worse. You had entire threads where page after page was nothing but spoiler tags as manga/novel/etc. readers starting having conversations between themselves, with no regard for the fact that anime threads are meant for people to discuss the anime.

My solution is: if people would just report the damn spoilers, we will ban the offenders. First offence gets a day. Second offence gets 5 days. And up from there. And if that doesn't "convince the majority to not discuss spoilers at all [in anime threads]", then that "majority" will no longer be registered members on this forum. If that culls the membership significantly but we have a remainder that can respect the forum rules, then fine. But I don't think that's what's going to happen actually.

You brought up SAO, which seemed like an epidemic of spoilers at first. But within a few weeks of really aggressive spoiler policy policing, the spoilers slowed down to a crawl, and fellow posters helped each other to know when not to post. So it is an achievable goal. But the mods and I don't watch every anime and can't police every threads as aggressively as I policed SAO. So this is where we really need the help of members who do care about this to not be complacent, or to assume that either a) the mods don't care, or b) someone else must have reported it already.

The problem with spoilers is that people follow the trend. If one person starts posting spoilers, other people start thinking it's okay, and it becomes an accepted part of the sub-culture of that particular thread. People don't necessarily participate in threads across the site, so they may not bother paying attention to what the normal rules are. And because it becomes "part of the sub-culture" it causes some people to start thinking that it's okay (because, again, they assume that someone else reported it and the mods allowed it, as was implied by the thread here), which is probably not the case.


So anyway, creating threads like this is pointless because, unless you actually reported the problems, you are part of the problem. No, just reporting one or two posts and being like "oh the mods should know by now" is not good enough. I don't watch this show right now, so I'm not going to read the thread and be spoiled on things that happen in the anime (never mind what happens in the source material). Putting this all on the mod team like it's "our failure" is not fair. None of the mods receive a cent for doing anything on this site, so expecting us to voluntarily police threads for shows we don't even watch and to even be able to know when things are and aren't spoilers in such cases is not right (let alone always even possible). All the members are partners in helping enforce the rules, particularly on issues like this.

Thread closed.