On an anime-related site today, I realized I was needlessly following old habits - squinting my eyes to not read too much at a time, scanning for "trigger words" in the first couple of lines, etc - because I'm so used to it on Batoto. It's only an impression, but I'm afraid the site where it's most officially against the rules to spoil is one of those where it's most common. Would it be possible to drop the checkbox and the nominal requirement in favor of a plea to follow Wheaton's Law, since spoiler policy is routinely not followed and rarely-to-never enforced*?
* - I don't blame the mods (or any of the people graciously running the site, for which we're indebted) for this in the least. Without community reports, culling spoilers would be a nightmarish, sisyphean task. (Even with them, it would be a lot of work.) It's hard enough to get forumites to report problems even if you stick a button next to every post, so I'd guess there are practically no reports.
AFAIK it got introduced somewhen in 2015 (the check is only in the default theme btw) to make people check clarified comments rules because of how unruly and chaotic comments got since the site's launch (reaction image spam, off-topic walls of text, etc.). I've never bothered to pay attention to comments, and so I have no data on the effectiveness of the check, but I'd hazard a guess that it made some people who are capable of adapting to rules adapt and people who cbb with effort probably haven't even read what it's about.
I also think the issue is more about accessibility (of the comments section) leading to laziness (and people just commenting with whatever's on their mind ASAP after reading the latest chapter).
Also trying to tackle the problem too late and having to deal with lots of casual readers with gained bad habits in relation to that section.
As I've said though, I don't know what's currently going on in your average comments section so just treat it as me thinking out loud.
I also think the issue is more about accessibility (of the comments section) leading to laziness (and people just commenting with whatever's on their mind ASAP after reading the latest chapter).
Also trying to tackle the problem too late and having to deal with lots of casual readers with gained bad habits in relation to that section.
As I've said though, I don't know what's currently going on in your average comments section so just treat it as me thinking out loud.
I suspect that's a lot of it. I honestly wouldn't even know where to go on Batoto if I wanted to discuss spoilers without enclosing them in spoiler tags.
Also: I'm sure it's well-intentioned, but the rules about enclosing images and more than a few lines of text in spoiler tags muddles the issue pretty badly. An extra fingerstroke for a long post is a minuscule annoyance; someone announcing the ending they saw in the raws makes me want to punch lolis.
The obvious place to discuss spoilers would be in the comic-associated forum section. Unfortunately, one of the site optimizations a while back was to delete all the empty comic forums. Because of that it requiresed special permission to create the first forum topic for a comic. You have had to ask a staff member to create the empty forum. Then you can could create a topic for your spoilers discussion.
edit: See next comment. The period of time when it was difficult to create forum topics under a comic might have reinforced some bad habits.
Because of that it requires special permission to create the first forum topic for a comic. You have to ask a staff member to create the empty forum. Then you can create a topic for your spoilers discussion.
It should only apply to the old, empty comic fora from before the changes in the automated creation of new ones.
Trouble is, however the bad habits appeared... they're there. At least imo, the best solutions would be to add a button to flag untagged spoilers (and make the mods' lives a lot more troublesome) and/or make separate tags for images and text that work like spoiler tags (to clarify a minor annoyance that muddles a major headache)... or, as noted, to drop the checkbox for an unenforced policy. But I hope someone else has a better solution.
kinda undoable because of some more important comments-related modifications that'd be in conflict with it, but report-happy users seem to do fine either by reporting in the comments report thread in QA or by reporting the offending user directly
kinda undoable because of some more important comments-related modifications that'd be in conflict with it, but report-happy users seem to do fine either by reporting in the comments report thread in QA or by reporting the offending user directly
>separate tags
already present
though not mentioned in that rules thread yet
Re: separate tags, thank you - that's really good to know. But as you say, mentioning it in the rules thread so people know it's an option would be good.
But given the widespread unchecked spoiling and almost no usage of the thread for that purpose, it seems moot. The three comments I took the time to chase down (not many more in the entire last year) show a mod openly dismissing the issue (23 July, in response to an accurate report) and the issue being ignored (25 Sept and 24 Dec accurate reports, untagged spoilers are still there).
And regardless - however the bad habits appeared, they're there and not being addressed. If there's no adequate remedy, and I don't have one... imo it wouldn't be a bad thing to replace the disdained checkbox with how-to instructions for the spoiler and hide tags, and an appeal to Wheaton's Law.
Sorry for the double-post, but to put in context how bad it is (and this is just the tip of the iceberg, lesser spoilers are routine):
(Kiss x Sis, no spoiler tag in original)
Say guys in case you are looking at the raw scans here's a heads up:
Spoiler
miharu got a little bold at the last page of the next chapter.
Horimiya, no spoiler tag in original)
So I read some discouraging comments about the future of this manga.
no idea why spoiler tag doesn't seem to be working properly
Spoiler
The webcomic is its source material and apparently after Miyamura proposes to Hori it sorta stops being their story and becomes more about the side characters. I mean it's good to have chapters covering those side characters, but I would hate if it stopped covering Hori and Miyamura.
It also becomes more of a gag story than anything else.
Now obviously that while it will take stuff from the webcomic, I hope it keeps its focus on them because that's what I was reading it for. I mean it's called "HORIMIYA" and if they aren't in it anymore, then I might just drop it even though I do enjoy all the other characters.
With chapter 74, I think it's already beginning.
‡‡
For reference, I can't be certain about the latter since my defense mechanisms kicked in and I was able to stop reading within a few words after the first sentence. All the more so since there's a spoiler tag in there somewhere, though there so much text before and after it that I didn't see it.‡ The first one, I had no choice - imo, because it was intended that way. By continuing a system where it's officially and very obviously against rules that will never be enforced, it practically encourages people to not only carelessly spoil, but be @$$holes about it and TRY to spoil. And these are just the most recent two on my watch-list*.
* - Yes, I have a tiny little watch-list. I'm secure enough in my manga-linity that it doesn't bother me any more. Well... not much.
‡ - Small text and second spoiler tag added in as an edit.
‡‡ - Hide tag added as a second edit, because for some reason spoiler tag isn't working as intended.
One last edit, to add a random idea that occurred: In Special BBCode, rename "Spoiler (nameable)", which is misleading, to "Hide". Change the color of the "Show" for hide tags to blue, and for spoiler tags to red. "Introduce" the hide tag as being distinct from spoiler tags in a mini-tutorial under comment entry fields, mentioning the two new colors. People can't resist adding "flair", as demonstrated by the whole "badges" idea in online gaming - the result will be that properly using spoiler/hide tags becomes significantly more popular, and @$$hole-spoiling will stand out like a sore thumb.
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