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A few recent examples of spoilers in question titles:


I don't watch Game of Thrones, but so many of these titles seem to give away the death of characters or plot points.

I do watch the Arrowverse shows, so I can say these question titles definitely contain spoilers:


There are more examples than I'm listing here, which makes me wonder, what does the community think about the handling of spoilers in question titles? Is it okay as it it, or should we be more vigilant?

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    First one can be renamed to What happened to Obi-Wan's lightsaber after new hope. I don't think 2nd and 4th much of a spoiler. Arrowverse question can have a better spoiler free title but is it not our policy to edit out spoilers straight away?
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Dec 28, 2016 at 20:37
  • Anyway I have changed the title of killing joke question.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Dec 28, 2016 at 20:40
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    40 years is enough time for a fraking spoiler.
    – cde
    Dec 28, 2016 at 22:38
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    Apparently you are either not vigilant enough or don't actually deem those things spoilers, since you haven't edited them out yet.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Dec 29, 2016 at 0:00
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    The problem is that what one person considers a spoiler isn't necessarily a spoiler to others... If you think a title is a spoiler, change it! You are a user here and are capable of editing questions. What are you expecting from this question?
    – Catija
    Dec 29, 2016 at 0:00
  • Mods have seen those questions and deemed them okay, so who am I to impose my personal preferences on others? That's the point of this post, does the community think those questions are okay and no action is needed, or do they agree that theses titles should be changed? If the answer is "Yes", then I will start editing spoiler titles.
    – Oliver_C
    Dec 29, 2016 at 9:26
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    @cde - what's the cut off point? 40 years ... 30 years ... 20 years? How old does a film have to be for it to be okay to post spoilers?
    – Oliver_C
    Dec 29, 2016 at 9:28
  • A soft 5 years, maximum.
    – cde
    Dec 29, 2016 at 9:49
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    @Oliver_C if you feel its spoiler , you are entitled to change the tittle to make it spoiler free. Just make sure the information you are removing from tittle is presend in body or else add it. And deciding years for spoiler , not sure any number can be fixed.
    – Panther
    Dec 29, 2016 at 10:50
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    Mods are here to address major issues, not to be the only three users on the site to make edits. If we require this of them, they will burn out and leave. Part of being a high reputation user is to help moderate the site.
    – Catija
    Dec 29, 2016 at 22:05
  • @Catija - That what I'm asking here. If the community wants better spoiler control I will help and start editing titles, but if they are okay with how things are right now, then I'l leave it be. - At the moment my question is at "-1", which I interpret as "Leave things be as they are".
    – Oliver_C
    Dec 29, 2016 at 22:29
  • I'd rather interpret the downvotes as meaning "I don't understand the purpose of this question and why he doesn't just edit the titles he deems inappropriate", so pretty much along what Catija said.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Jan 1, 2017 at 17:06

1 Answer 1

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If you think it's a spoiler, change it.

Period.

If someone doesn't like it, they can revert it but this is extremely uncommon.

Please don't expect mods to do all of the work. At least one of our mods doesn't really care much about spoilers at all so is less likely to edit topics unless they're utterly blatantly spoilers.

Note - Please, if you're going to edit, don't make it so utterly inane of a title that it doesn't actually make sense. "Why did he do this?" is a bad title. "Why did Vader do this to Obi-Wan" is better.

We get complaints every time a question with a spoiler in the title hits the Hot Network Questions list... feel free to help us avoid this in future by editing titles.

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