User blog:Gsimenas/Unital Ring Content vs Spoiler

December 7 marked the release of Sword Art Online light novel volume 21, the first volume of the new SAO main story arc. However, due to the fact that the volume is currently only available in Japanese (or summaries of it on the net), this brings about certain concerns for our wiki. How should we handle content on the wiki?

Spoilers
The first obvious concern is, of course, the issue of spoilers. While it's only natural to expect spoilers for volume 21 on the Volume 21 article... it's far less obvious to expect spoilers on random articles not specifically related to the new arc... for example, I was once spoiled about Eugeo's fate because some guy decided to be a dick and post them on an article for a sword... Kirito's sword that is... not the kind of place where you'd expect such a major spoiler. So, this issue is important not only for our readers, but for our editors as well. Editors are even more likely to be spoiled while reviewing edits on the wiki than readers are to find a page with such spoilers.

For an easier discussion, I'd like to divide our articles in different categories based on how spoilers might end up there:


 * 1) Unital Ring specific articles (e.g., Unital Ring (the game) article, Unital Ring Arc article, new cast members etc.)
 * 2) Returning characters (e.g., Kirito's article)
 * 3) Random articles that have some sort of connection to Unital Ring that you wouldn't expect by default (e.g., articles for items from older arcs that end up being used in the new arc)

The first category is pretty simple - if you go there, you're definitely expecting to be spoiled, so all we would need is a label at the top of the page or something.

The second category is a bit more tricky. Spoilers under chronology are pretty easy to handle... just use a spoiler template to hide the content unless people hover over it. However, a bigger issue is the leading paragraph and the infobox. That's where we list what games the character plays and basic facts about them... and you can't exactly use a spoiler template there as the very fact that you need a spoiler tag there pretty much gives away the spoiler on its own. Not to mention that our current spoiler template (https://swordartonline.wikia.com/wiki/Template%3ASpoilers) can't really be used in infoboxes and mid-paragraph as is. The leading paragraph would also need to mention general facts about the character in the arc, but this could be done in a separate paragraph, so it's much less of an issue.

Now, you might think that there isn't an issue with just listing that the character appears in Unital Ring. Is it really that big of a surprise that Kirito is in there? Not really. However, as we've seen in the last illustration of the volume, some returning characters are supposed to be (pleasant) surprises. So, how should we handle their articles? That specific character requires not only spoilers in the leading paragraph, but a change in their status in general on the wiki, since we never knew what happened to that character before.

As for the third category, it really depends on the type of spoiler. The major issue here is that some idiots can add major spoilers to an otherwise innocent article and end up spoiling people that didn't expect to find spoilers there (see my personal example above).

So, the question is: should we allow Unital Ring spoilers on the wiki? If so, to what extent? What should be tagged and what shouldn't? Do we allow stuff that we can't actually tag?

Up-to Date info
On the other hand, we are a wiki. As a wiki, our site is visited because people want to look up something related to the wiki, including spoilery content for some. As such, we have an obligation to have up-to date info on the wiki so that people wouldn't be misled just because we're afraid of spoilers.

Content Validity
Now, the by far most major issue of the bunch is our capability of validating content (i.e., confirming that the content we have on the wiki is accurate). For starters, this requires editors who are familiar with the content of the new arc, so they must either be willing to get themselves spoiled, or be able to read the book itself. However, even if some people don't mind getting spoiled, they won't be able to accurate validate the content without being able to reference the book itself... and it will take a while for the book to be translated. As such, only people who can properly (i.e., not through machine translations) read the book will be able to carry out this job. But that doesn't leave us with a lot of options...

This issue is the reason why spoilers were such a big concern while Alicization was still untranslated. Alicization had a web version that allowed people to be aware of future events before the books officially came out, opening a whole different can of worms as web novel content was sometimes change for the published version. As such, validating non-translated content, especially from the web novel, was awfully problematic and we basically restricted the problematic kinds of spoilers from the wiki entirely (i.e., did not allow to spoil which characters died and stuff like that until the translation caught up), while other stuff were allowed under spoiler tags but were left unreviewed for accuracy, as we lacked people who could actually confirm the accuracy of such content.

On the other hand, Unital Ring does not have a web version and I decided to start reading the Japanese version myself as I was interested in where the story was heading. So, I technically could be able to handle reviews related to Unital Ring myself... once I'm actually caught up. But what about the transition period (i.e. the time from when a book is published to the time I finish reading it). Do we allow unvalidated content on the wiki during that time, or do we wait till we have someone capable of confirming the accuracy of such content? Remember, this issue will come up whenever a new book gets released.

Closing Remarks
As such, the concerns come down to:
 * 1) What is the extent of spoilers that we allow on the wiki without leaving our wiki largely outdated?
 * 2) How do we tag the spoilers?
 * 3) How do we handle content that we cannot validate yet?

I hope to hear your take on how our wiki will tackle these issues.