How long should new content be protected with spoiler markup etc.? [duplicate]

Question

I've seen a lot of questions since the new Star Wars movie premiered where most people title their questions in a roundabout manner in order to avoid revealing spoilers, since spoiler markup (afaik) don't work in the title field when you ask a question. For example, over a decade ago it would make sense to title your question as "Why did this happen to Anakin?" when today you would have simply typed "Why did Anakin lose his right hand?" Two more recent examples:

• Does Han Solo only do this because Leia asked him to do it?

• Why not take a shot at Kylo Ren when given the opportunity?

As we can see, such titles don't serve well in the long term. Every new release (movie, book etc.) brings new hype, new content and a flurry of new questions with good answers. If these questions aren't titled well, their answers aren't useful in the long term to the community since future askers with the same question may not be able to find it in the search results, leading only to more duplicates. People won't go back years later to rename old questions, and I doubt mods will conduct "renaming exercises" either.

While I don't think we have a good long-term solution to this anytime soon, the next best thing may be to have a guideline for how long new content should be considered spoilers - in other words, how long question titles that may normally be considered poorly worded would be tolerated to prevent spoilers. As such, generalized, my question is: When a new release comes out, for how long should we consider protecting spoilers while it matters most more important than the long term usefulness of the question to the community (as elaborated in my previous paragraph)?

Answer 1

The policy we have typically adhered to, which has been the consensus opinion for years, is that there is no "expiration date" on spoilers. You should try to be frugal in what you put behind spoiler markup, because odds are, it will be there forever. At the same time, if something really is a spoiler, you should continue to mask it no matter how "old" is it. But, first and foremost, you should make things make sense, with the spoiler as a secondary consideration.

We make a distinction on this site between title spoilers and post spoilers. Titles can't use markdown syntax, so there's no way to "hide" spoilers in them. Titles are also visible in a lot more places, and with a lot less conscious effort, than the bodies of questions/answers. So we're a bit stricter with keeping spoilers out of them. But never at the expense of making the title meaningless.

The quick-and-dirty rules of thumb are:

• Try to make your title as free of key plot developments as possible, but always make it meaningful.
• Try to avoid giving away key plot details in your questions and answers if they are not relevant to your post.
• If you need to include key plot details, put as little as possible behind spoiler markup.

The tricky part is deciding what is a "key" plot detail. Not everything we learn in a movie is a spoiler. A spoiler is, by definition, something that will spoil the movie for you if you knew it ahead of time. To use The Force Awakens as an example, knowing that Han Solo confronts Kylo Ren isn't a spoiler, because the good guy confronting the bad guy is something you're probably expecting to happen. But, knowing that

Han Solo is Kylo Ren's dad, and Kylo kills Han

is a huge spoiler, and will continue to be a spoiler forever for anyone who hasn't seen the movie.

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Note that you have to use a bit of common sense here, as well. Some spoilers seep so deeply into the public awareness that they just don't matter anymore. No one's spoiling the fact that Luke is Darth Vader's son, or that he blows up the Death Star with the Force, because "everyone" knows that (within a reasonable margin of error).