I think that there needs to be a universal rule regarding spoilers and theories in the "Living Room" subforum. As far as I've encountered this is the first site where members have complained about openly visible episode discussions about episodes that have already aired and theories about what may happen next. Perciously few members have seemed to have given voice to that opinion that these instances be hidden by an invisible tag thus far, one being a moderator. Still, I request that it is called to a vote as I beleive that it is unfair to restrict opinions and discussions behind extra barriors. My suggestion for a vote are these options. 1. Invisitag spoilers only, not theories. 2. Invisitag episodes that have only aired in the past 2 hours. 3. Tag everything concerning plot of aired episodes. The problem with the third option is a thread in which basically everything is hidden and thus almost useless. The second is one I consider a compromise. People watch at their own pace, movies are out for years that people haven't seen and its been about unanimously agreed that spoiling it in discussion is acceptable elsewhere. Shows are much the same, though like I said this rule would be a good compromise even though I disagree with it. So, again I request this be put to an open vote as well as internal.
This would be impossible when newbies would kick in around album cycles. I know I didn't follow any rules when I joined. So I had to post with 2 infractions for a year.
I don't see this ever becoming a rule that we enforce. We have the invisible tag, people should use it out of respect for others, but we can't enforce it, mainly because we don't know everything about every show. Think of it from a staff perspective - if someone says "So and so did such and such on this show", if I don't follow said show, how would I know if they're referencing an episode that aired two hours or two years ago? It would be impossible for me to make any determination if a rule was broken or not. Lastly, every show and movie discussed in The Living Room are pretty well organized into their own threads. If you missed the last episode of Breaking Bad and really don't want any spoilers, perhaps it's best to stay out of the Breaking Bad thread until you've seen it, or at least stay away from the last couple pages. Just assume there will be spoilers. Staff will discuss this and if a majority of them disagree with me, then we'll see where it goes, but honestly, don't get your hopes up.
Ding ding ding we have a winner. I see both sides of the story. For starters: 1. You go into a thread about a show; you should expect there to be spoilers, especially if the show just had an episode that aired the prior night. No amount of invisible tags or spoiler warnings will avoid the possible spoiler if you're not being careful. Especially when our mobile skin doesn't support the invisible tag (at least not currently) and quoting unfortunately reveals the text [no matter what we do to try and code the color not to do so]. It just happens. 2. As for the other side of the coin and using a spoiler tag, it's called being courteous. It takes two seconds to tag a post with a spoiler/invisible tag to prevent other people from seeing it. Sure with the aforementioned mobile skin bug, spoilers can still occur...but seriously, it's not that hard to tag a spoiler. 3. At best we can try to find a less annoying spoiler tag, perhaps a 'click to reveal' instead of one where you must highlight everything...but it still wont solve all the problems.