I know this has been asked before, but n the new age it seems a good idea to get clarication on this. Could there be a rethink on the spoiler policy. If I understand it correctly, any spoiler of an American show is OK in any thread by the next day. But this seems a little unfair on non-US Snarkers who are always going to be behind. And I don't understand the policy abot European shows - does 'while it's airing' mean 'between 7pm and 7.45pm on Saturday evenings'? or 'for the three months of the run'? Because, to use the most obvious example, we've been pretty good in the Doctor Who thread (and elsewhere) about use spoilers for anything we know hasn't aired in the US and it would be nice to think non-US SFers could roam freely without being spoiled for Lost or 24 or whatever.

Spoilers are always tricky.

The main problem is that most of our viewers are in the US. Threads become ridiculous if you have to spoil everything - especially with our way of spoiling they will look empty. If they have to wait until the shows are aired outside the US, they may still have to be spoilering events from the beginning of the season when the season finale is airing. There's also the problem that shows don't air all at the same time in other countries, so knowing when spoiling could stop is another problem.

As for Doctor Who, not talking while it airs is still required, as in when the show is running. Other than that...I'll have to ask some people who actually watch the series, but at least wait until it could be downloaded.



ETA: Wait, having read this over again, do you mean in that specific thread or just on the board in general?

Both? I understand that if I'm watching Lost half a season behind everyone else, it's a bit risky venturing into the Lost thread, but I'd be annoyed if there were major spoilers posted elsewhere that I couldn't stop myself reading. Which everyone has been brilliant about not doing, to be fair, so I may just be looking for trouble where there is none. But it's always hard - if someone mentioned they were going to watch Don't Look Now that evening, they'd be justifably miffed if someone said 'Oh, you'll jump out of your skin when..." yet it's the sort of spoiler you might casually post in a film thread. Same problem for books eg whodunnits. And I know lots of people have to wait for a film to come out on dvd or have a late release date.

It just seems that general practice on the boards doesn't follow the policy and maybe the two should be made the same (but my vote would be to legitimise current practise and be a little careful when not in the show's own thread).

Honestly this isn't all because my 6 year old computer can't even cope with I-tunes let alone Bittorrent...

The mods talked about it, and we're going to try having a subsection of the Television forum for threads for people not in the US, so they can talk about shows as they air in their own countries.

I'm not sure we have enough non-US people for it to work, but it never hurts to try out.

We'll also ammend the spoiler rules to tell people to err on the side of caution when spoiling and to be courteous to other snarkers either not in the US or waiting to watch on DVD etc. when posting outside a show's own thread. If you (or anybody) sees a big non-tagged spoiler, PM a mod so that we can tag it or ask the member to tag it before other people who may not expect it see it as well.

Instead of starting a new thread for this question I thought it could go here...

What's the policy on Spoilers & Speculations threads for TV shows? It looks like Lost is the only show that has one, but I didn't know if that was a special exception or if S&S threads could be started for any TV show.

Thanks for your help!

No, it's not the norm.

A show like Lost tends to get much more of the spoiler/speculation talk, or at least did, and has a lot of people who more strictly want to avoid the speculations. We decided to divide it into two threads so that people aren't exiled from the thread or talking over and under each other in spoilers. We made a similar thread for the Harry Potter books.


So in conclusion, you shouldn't make a spoiler/spec thread, but if you feel a show or book or movie really deserves it, ask us and we'll consider it.