Wikipedia:Spoiler warning

For software, see Software (SOFT); for Spoken Wikipedia, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia (WSW).

A spoiler is a piece of information in an article about a narrative work (such as a book, feature film, television show or video game) that may reduce one's enjoyment of it by revealing certain plot events or twists. If someone hasn't read, watched or played the material to which the warning refers, he or she might wish to do so before reading the spoiler in the article.

Not all visitors will recognize the nature of Wikipedia, which strives first to inform, spoilers or not. An article may contain analyses and background detail not available—or at least, not obvious—in the work described. Where this is the case, some people feel a spoiler notice should be made prominent as a simple courtesy.

It is also recommended that editors avoid placing spoilers in Edit_summaries#Writing_edit_summaries or section headers (unless the spoiler warning is before the Table_of_contents#Table_of_contents_.28TOC.29) and avoid linking from another article to a section inside the spoiler area. Spoilers made outside of the article on the story in question can still be preceeded by the spoiler warning.

Suggested templates

One standard way to warn readers of potential spoilers is to insert before the revealing text. This expands to:

If you wish to specify the spoiler's nature (particularly if this isn't clear from the article's / section's title), you may use before the revealing text. expands to:

(a particular element) with the appropriate phrase. This template also can be used to specify that spoilers affect multiple works, as the phrase can be a list or description of several works that are spoiled by the article involved.

If an article contains spoilers pertaining to both the titular subject and a subject or subjects other than the one indicated in the title, you may use before the revealing text. expands to:

text displayed above as ' will be the article's title. Replace (other subjects)''' with the appropriate phrase.

Unlike the template, emphasizes the distinction between the article's titular subject and the other subject(s) potentially "spoiled," and should be used only in an applicable situation.

Note that some editors encourage the use of instead of , especially if you're unsure of which to use. The former can be applied to any situation that calls for the latter (albeit with less than ideal results), but the reverse is not true. Therefore, whenever in doubt, it's best to use .

If an article contains spoilers regarding any other subject not covered by the previous templates, you may use before the revealing text. expands to:

(subject) with the appropriate phrase.

If these general-purpose Template messagess are not suitable for the particular article you are working on, feel free to custom-design your own warning, but please link back to this page. It's strongly recommended that you do so manually (not in template form), unless you believe that your new spoiler warning is applicable to a wide array of articles spanning numerous subjects. If deemed redundant (in light of the existing templates) or too specific by others, it's likely that your template will be Templates_for_deletion.

If only part of the article contains spoilers, and you wish to indicate where these end (so that a reader can skip the spoilers and read the parts below), you can insert . This expands to:

Specialized templates

The following spoiler templates are for specialized uses.

Secrets of magic tricks

Puzzle solutions

When a puzzle, word problem or similar question is presented, you may wish to insert before giving the solution. This expands to:

Expandation.

Comic book solicitation

When adding sales information for a yet-to-be-published comic, you may wish to precede it with . This expands to:

Unacceptable alternatives

In various Internet discussion forums, a widespread convention is the insertion of blank (or virtually blank) lines before a spoiler (which removes the offending text from the reader's view, until he/she scrolls to the next page). Obviously, this is unacceptable in a general-purpose encyclopedia.

On the Usenet computer network, a popular method of concealing spoilers (and sometimes, offensive material) is ROT13 encryption. Again, this is unacceptable in a general-purpose encyclopedia.

Another common method of hiding spoilers from readers is to change the color of the text to match that of the page background, thus rendering the text unreadable until highlighted by the reader in a selection. Hiding text in this manner is unacceptable here because it requires explanation to readers unfamiliar with the practice, and because it may be incompatible with computer accessibility devices such as screen readers. Also, some web browsers highlight text by inverting the colors of the text and background. In these browsers, for white text on a white background, highlighting produces black text on a black background. Also, it is possible for a user to set their browser to refuse to change text color (just as they can refuse to display images); text-only browsers (such as Lynx) may likewise disregard requests to change text color.