A Friendly Request

[Ecthelion III he/him]

Please refrain from putting spoilers in the titles of threads. Everyone can see them.

[Chaos he/him]

I would also add that it is quite warranted to report such topic titles as you are exactly right, that is not to be a thing and is against policy. So please report such topic titles.

[Chaos he/him]

I would also like to add that we may or may not change the topic title depending on the instance of the spoilers.

We got a lot of blowback when Secret History came out where we were--understandably--very strict about spoilers, where people had to have unnecessarily vague titles to avoid such things. There's a balance between useful topic titles and blatant spoilers. Lots of people have different thresholds on what is spoilery. Some people take this to be very extreme on such matters, and that any info is too much. There's going to be a balance of useful topic titles and protecting big spoilers. When weighing this, we will also weigh how old the book is.

For example, the Lord Ruler dies. Gasp, I didn't even mark it in spoiler tags outside of book discussion! But seriously, Sauron dies, the villains die. It's also an old spoiler and people reference that fact a lot later in the series. I am not going to have people tip-toe around that.

Now the circumstances of such an event, that is a lot more specific. Not only that, but we are very protective to big mysteries of the books being mysterious. 

But a lot of minor spoilers exist and especially on older works, I doubt we'll be very strict. On some things sure, but if someone wants to discuss, say, Hoid and Dalinar's conversation, people do not need to obfuscate that in the topic title by saying "It's that conversation between those two characters". In a lot of situations the fact that such a scene occurred is not, in itself, spoilery. I know some might say, "Oh no now I know Hoid and Dalinar spoke!" But, like, what else would you call such a topic other than "Hoid and Dalinar"? It isn't useful in a browsing experience to be super vague to protect people who are so sensitive to spoilers that something in a book that's years old, where you now know two characters interact, is offensive. 

Obviously for new releases we will be extremely strict about topic titles, but that does loosen with time.

Feel free to post here or PM me if anyone would like a discussion in depth about our stance. It could be refined more.

[Straw he/him]

Yeah, I am thinking about going on hiatus due to spoilery thread titles from Edgedancer and AU essays popping up in the Stormlight archive and cosmere theories subforum. Could you possibly make a AU essays subforum?

EDIT: Could you also consider making it so spoiler board threads are not shown it the most recently posted box.

[Chaos he/him]

2 minutes ago, Oolka the Paranoid said:

Yeah, I am thinking about going on hiatus due to spoilery thread titles from Edgedancer and AU essays popping up in the Stormlight archive and cosmere theories subforum. Could you possibly make a AU essays subforum?

EDIT: Could you also consider making it so spoiler board threads are not shown it the most recently posted box.

I can't actually remove specific forums from the recent topic list. This is the primary reason we flag titles there. 

I'm not sure I want to make an AU essay subforum. Since I can't remove it from the recent topic list, I don't think we gain too much. But I am up to be persuaded. I think topic titles haven't been too bad, except for maybe one (which was difficult to see how it should be named, and be useful without being a bit spoilery.) It's a careful balance. 

I am generally resistant to an AU essay subforum because that information could be relevant for other theories and I don't want people to be forced to only discuss that material in a spoiler board, as would usually be the case.