Wikipedia:Spoiler

For software, see Wikipedia:Software (WP:SOW)

Some articles may contain spoilers. A spoiler is a piece of information about a narrative work (such as a book, feature film, television show or video game) that may reduce your enjoyment of it by revealing certain plot events or twists. If you haven't read or seen the work to which the warning refers, you might want to do so before reading the spoiler in the article.

Suggested templates

Not all visitors will recognize the site as an encyclopedia, which should strive first to inform, spoilers or not. The article should also contain analyses and background detail not available—or at least, not obvious—in the work being critiqued. Where this is the case, a spoiler notice should be made prominent as a simple courtesy.

{{spoiler}} - This tag is the "catch all". It alerts users that multiple spoilers are ahead. This expands to: Template:Spoiler

{{spoiler-about}} - If it is necessary to explicitely state the spoiler's nature, particularly if this isn't clear from the article's/section's title, you may use this tag. This template can also be used to specify that spoilers affect multiple works, as the phrase can be a list or description of several works which are spoiled by the article involved. For example, {{spoiler-about|(specific topics)}} expands to: Template:Spoiler-about

If these general-purpose templates 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 nominated for deletion.

Unacceptable alternatives

On the Usenet computer network, a popular method of avoiding spoilers (and sometimes, offensive material) was ROT13 encryption. This is obviously unacceptable in a general-purpose encyclopedia.

Another common way to hide 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. It also is regarded as an ugly hack. [[fr:Wikip%E9dia:D%E9voile_l%27intrigue_du_r%E9cit]]