Spoilers

[ciphergoth]

Someone should invent a calibrated standard scale by which spoilers can be measured, something like the Beaufort or Richter scales so you could just write "Level 1 spoiler ahead for Battlestar Galactica webisode The Face of the Enemy" and people would know what you meant...

And how could I forget to link to Penny Arcade 2005-12-05: As Regards Spoilification

Comments

[figg.livejournal.com]

Again, any information is a spoiler - even the amount that it spoils can be a spoiler.

I guess you want some way of gradual revelation of spoiler, where you can up the granularity.

A spoiler
A spoiler about a major character
A spoiler about X
etc

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

even the amount that it spoils can be a spoiler.

Don't you go all Douglas Hofstadter on me!

hofstaders spoiler corollary

[figg.livejournal.com]

Spoilers spoil more than you realise, even when you take hofstader's law into account

[simont]

I had a particularly frustrating moment once where I saw an online discussion in which some people appeared to have independently reinvented an idea that comes up in Greg Egan's Quarantine, and were enjoying discussing its implications. So I wanted to say "if you think that's a cool idea, you should read Quarantine" – except that because the thing they'd come up with was the unexpected plot twist, I couldn't give them that perfect book recommendation without it being a spoiler!