Howdy everyone. I haven't contributed to this project before, but I wanted to hear from y'all and understand better what the goals and values are regarding how articles are designed. Namely, I'd love to know if serious discussion has occurred about the pros/cons to having significantly spoilerific content at the top of most articles.

I have 2 brief examples for why this is of interest to me:

1. I just finished Bad Batch after a few months away from the show. I had forgotten who Edmon Rampart was, so I searched him up and found his article here. (Thanks to all contributors!) Unavoidably, in trying to just get a few sentences of his background, I saw the info box where his death is listed, pointing pretty obviously that it was going to happen in the show I was about to finish.

2. I played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic this year (alongside the podcast A More Civilized Age). If you're familiar with the game, there is one key twist about a character's identity. This resulted in the podcast hosts hugely discouraging visiting this website in any way because it is spoiled in so many places by the design of that character's article name.

For comparison, the Wikipedia article for Santa Claus notably doesn't scream "NOT REAL" at the top. I've long assumed that the choice of "legendary" there was subject to much discussion in talk pages over many years trying to balance accuracy with something like kindness.

I can imagine alternatives for Wookiepedia like spoiler tags, starting with some info box content collapsed, or even more subtle writing (in the case of my item #2).

For myself personally and I'd guess a non-trivial portion of visitors, their experience of Wookiepedia isn't totally positive. I doubt y'all want the impact of article design to include a dash of anxiety, but that's what happens for me.

Ultimately the current situation is the product of admins' and editors' priorities for what this website is supposed to be. It seems to lean towards exhaustively informative, which is a good thing for an encyclopedia to be! But with the subject being an entertainment product, I'd argue it comes at an increased expense of some people's enjoyment.

So I'm curious to know more about what thought has gone into this. Thanks!

Discuss[]

• By nature Wookieepedia is going to have spoilers for every piece of Star Wars media. I'm not going to say you shouldn't be here if you don't want spoilers, but I will say to browse at your own risk. For what it's worth, we do spoiler tag articles with new information on them. {{Spoiler}} is placed at the top of articles with spoilers and stays there for an entire month following the release of the new content. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 04:00, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
  • To further clarify, I wouldn't necessarily oppose longer-lasting/alternative measures of hiding spoilers, but having permanent ways of hiding spoilers would be incredibly obtrusive, clog up huge portions of articles (if not their entirety) and ultimately detract from the reading experience. I am currently of the opinion our current system for handling spoilers suffices but again, not opposed to (impermanent) alternatives. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 04:03, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
• Thank you for starting this discussion. We (contributors) do appreciate reader feedback for Wookieepedia! As an encyclopedia, we want to give readers articles that are comprehensive, accurate, and concise, and as you say, it would be good to explore ways to maintain this while giving some flexibility for readers who do not want to be spoiled for specific media. Taking just point one for now, regarding the death field in the infobox, I do agree that it can be very inconvenient if you're e.g. going through a television or book series and just want to know what one character looks like, only to be spoiled about their death immediately upon arriving on the page. There might be a way to hide the death field whether it is empty or filled in, making it opt-in information, while leaving the rest of the article as-is filled with spoilers. We'll have to ask around the tech wizards, of course. OOM 224 (he/him/they) 07:06, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

• In response to both of you: thanks for your thoughts! Thannus, totally agreed that this place has unavoidable spoilers; it's an essential part of what I understand the goals to be. I also definitely don't want huge walls of spoiler text littered across every article, which would also require decision-making as to what is significantly sensitive enough to avoid showing.

  What I'm lightly advocating for are potential solutions that are (i) low-maintenance and (ii) significantly reduce unwanted spoilers while (iii) minimally impeding the user that wants in-depth information.

  That's why the `Died` field in the info box taking a tiny effort to be seen (a click, a user setting?) feels like a win to me, as OOM 224 responded to.

  Additionally, I'd welcome a look at what info box items would be better and worse fits for this treatment. For example, I recall `Family information` listing that a character I've been watching was going to have a child, which was a significant reveal.

  The solution could also be less field-by-field (to avoid headache and debate). Perhaps the least subjective path could be making some groups in the info box start collapsed.

  I recognize I'm making a suggestion to you volunteers without offering energy of my own, so if nothing changes I fully understand. - EnduringBeta (talk) 16:50, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

  • To the contrary, I think it's incredibly important that readers offer their suggestions toward the wiki even if they don't edit too frequently themselves. While editors are the most consistently active, the largest portion of Wookieepedia's traffic comes from readers and it's important to prioritize the experience for them. Not to say that editors aren't also readers, but sometimes we lose some of that perspective that have non-editing readers have. So it's very appreciated. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 21:02, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
• I think this is a good idea, as I got some similar spoilers from Hunter and Omega's photo changes at the time of the release of The Cavalry Has Arrived. It showed them as older people, which spoiled the epilogue for me. I know this isn't related to death dates or other infobox data, but the same problem is present. I know that some websites like Reddit have an option to black out spoilers and make them accessible with a click on them that removes the black out, so that would be a good way to solve the infobox problem (if possible). As for the photo problem, maybe a pop-out screen with a spoiler warning on it could be good, but that's if you can even do stuff like that on the Wook. Loki-Is-Cool 12:47, 1 July 2024 (UTC)