Are spoiler edits becoming excessive?

Question

There seems to be a growing trend lately of question titles being edited to replace any object, person or plot point for a recent movie or TV episode with a vague "this X", resulting in titles like "Why did this person do this thing?"

An example from today (before):

Why wasn't the codex enough for Zod, in Man Of Steel?

And after: Why wasn't this thing enough for Zod, in Man Of Steel?

Another recent example (before):

Why did McCoy need Khan to revive Kirk?

And after: Why did McCoy need this person in particular to make his serum?

The first one, as far as I'm concerned, was perfectly fine prior to the edit. All it tells somebody is that there's something called a "codex" and that General Zod wants it; I recall that becoming pretty obvious within about five minutes of the movie starting, and doesn't seem like a spoiler to me at all.

The second needed editing, but the spoiler was that (just in case somebody still hasn't seen it)

Kirk dies and is revived

not that Khan was involved in making the serum; knowing that fact doesn't spoil the movie in any way.

Ideally looking for discussion on:

• Whether this is something we want to see continue
• Do we want/need any guidelines for determining what actually constitutes a spoiler (or are there any in place already)?
• How do we go about communicating all of this to users?

Answer 1

I feel that this can be solved by better editing, easily. Rough approximations:

• Why wasn't capturing Superman sufficient for Zod's goal?

• What were the necessary requirements (ingredients?) for McCoy to make his serum?

This doesn't make the title sound like a Jeopardy wannabe, while maintaining lack of spoilers.

Answer 2

In my opinion, the edited question titles you mention are harmful and should be reverted to their more descriptive titles (or better titles should be written for them). Using common sense, of course: actively trying to spoil plot points in a title is bad. The goal should be to write descriptive, non-generic question titles.

The purpose of a question title is to be descriptive and searchable. It should convey information about the full text of the question, and should help you decide whether

• You want to read the question.
• You may have knowledge to answer the question.

A vague title such as "why does this character do this to this other character in this TV show?" is meaningless and doesn't make me want to click on the question. It's not descriptive. If we decide we do not want to make descriptive titles a priority, taken to an extreme this would mean replacing every title with "Question about ${TV SHOW}", which I think everyone agrees wouldn't be an improvement.

Bad question title:

"Why does this character help this other character in Flash Gordon".

Better question title:

"Why does Princess Aura help Flash Gordon?"

Answer 3

Avoiding spoiler is just a question of politeness. It's not everybody that is annoyed by spoiler, but we must respect those who do. The thing we should ask is how much damage a title containing a spoiler could do VS how much damage a more vague, but spoiler-free title could do.

I think a spoiler in the title of a question is insidious. You could get hit by a spoiler title while browsing pages, or just by reading the weekly newsletter. In the worse case scenario, we could lose users that where hit by those spoilers. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

On the other hand, There is almost no harm from a more vague, but spoiler-free title. Making a question harder to find in the future? I don't believe it. A quick google search using keyword "why need khan serum" returned our question in first position. Worse case scenario, someone ask it again and the question get closed as a duplicate.

Therefore, I don't think spoiler edits becoming excessive.