When to Add a SPOILER?

[Mandi the Beast]

I'm still unsure when to make a spoiler tag because most forum discussions are a spoiler in one way or another. Can someone tell me when alerting a spoiler is needed?

 

[Linknerd09]

Only be needed if you are going to spoil someone's game. If people have not yet played a game of their choice, if discussing it and add spoilers in, I definitely use the Spoiler Tags.

 

[Ventus]

In general, there's this snippet of text in the Rules section of the board:

Failure to warn about Spoilers: A spoiler is any piece of information that gives: story line details, solutions to quests or dungeons, new characters or characters' secret identities, or secret items or items' locations that are meant to be revealed at a certain point during the game (excludes box, manual, and exposition). This isn't a strict rule and will not be punished as such. Users may be reminded via PM to be mindful of the common courtesy of hiding off-topic or spontaneous spoilers. Moderators reserve the right to edit posts to include spoiler tags at their discretion and issue at most a PM asking the user to be more cautious in the future.

So, I would say if a game is still relatively new (so around three months or so after Launch), slap a spoiler tag on the baby. If a game has had a reasonable time of release (I'd say around a year or so), then spoiler tags wouldn't be necessary but they would be courteous still.

 

[DeletedUser9]

You won't be punished for a failure to use the spoiler tags, regardless of the time of release (unless you're being intentionally rude with it, like claiming a thread is spoiler-free or about something else and then dropping a spoiler just to upset people), but as the rules say, it is a courtesy we would like people to practice. If the thing you're about to say spoils a secret or a reveal within the story or game, then it's a good idea to put the tag on. It's unnecessary if the thread is obviously about the topic, though. Like, for example, a thread titled "Demise's Speech" in the Skyward Sword section is going to contain end-game spoilers for Skyward Sword. No spoiler tags needed for anything in Skyward Sword while posting in that thread.

 

[Mandi the Beast]

Ah. Thank you very much.