ratcreature | a question of spoiler etiquette on social bookmarking sites

I try to tag every fanfic I read on del.icio.us so that I can find it again. Now I'm reading some post-DH stuff and naturally my regular tagging (which includes names for all characters in a story for example) as well as the summary blurbs (which I've tried to be better about including in my links), would contain spoilers for DH. I know some people subscribe to del.icio.us feeds or just browse there, and it's not like I can spoiler cut. I'd really like to keep with my bookmarking and tagging routine, but I wonder whether I'm going to get lynched for having tags with spoilery character names. I could make all my post-DH bookmarks private, and unlock them later, but that negates the point of using a social bookmarking site, and I may forget about the unlocking, because I tag a lot of stuff, and even if I have a post-DH tag to find them all again, there's afaik no mass action for making bookmarks not private, so this course of action is somewhat inconvenient. So how should I handle spoilers on a social bookmarking site? What are you doing about your spoilery bookmarks?

[Poll #1026237]

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I've been tagging all the DH bookmarks I am making with "deathlyhallows" and not really any more detail than that, so that they aren't spoilery for anyone flipping around. I figure that later, I can go in & change them, using the rename tag function. Anyway, you could do something like make a specific tag for a kind of discussion, so later you can change, um, "DHwwgraveyard" to "remus tonks death" or whatever.

The thing is, I tag mostly for fiction, and while I don't read that much HP compared to SGA or even SPN these days (in total since the beginning of July I tagged about a hundred stories I read for example), I tend to forget fiction details if I don't tag right away and would have to revisit every DH story to remind myself, and to use "code tags" seems a lot of effort, and I'm lazy. Also there's spoilery story summaries. For now I'm keeping my DH-related bookmarks, which aren't that many (yet) anyway, private, because to me it seems easier to just change one tickybox than to edit everything for a link.

You could um, rot13 them, and rename those later? That's a lot of work too.

I'm too lazy for that, especially with story summaries, which I have recently started to include in the desciption for stories I tag, and that wouldn't be useful for other users either. I rather make them private, that's just one tickybox to change

Heh. True. Great use of icon.

I don't actually feel like I have a dog in this fight (and will that metaphor become problematic given current events in the US?) since I haven't even made plans to get ahold of DH, nor made efforts to avoid spoilers.

dog in this fight (and will that metaphor become problematic given current events in the US?)

dog fights? what events have I missed? *is clueless as usual*

Oh, some sports figure was recently uncovered being involved in dog-fighting, and then tried to defend himself be being all, "It's a great sport!" I am only aware of it in that my TV boyfriend, Jon Stewart, mocked him.

If people really want to avoid spoilers, they can defriend (or denetwork, whatever) you on delicious until they're done. Or just avoid reading delicious network at all, which is what I did.

yeah, of course, but if the general fannish assumption was that social bookmarks were to be kept spoilerfree like you assume for LJs it'd be kind of unfair if a spoiler suddenly popped up in their network. I mean, I didn't unfriend anyone on LJ or reduced my reading list, because I trusted (and rightly so) that my flist would stay spoilerfree. So I'm mostly interested in what the common expectations are.

But I don't see how people could have that assumption!? I mean, there *is* no way to cut for spoilers on delicious. If there were no way to cut for spoilers on LJ, I certainly wouldn't stop posting material with spoilers. People would just have to suck it up and deal.

[Here from

metafandom. [wave]]

I think it's reasonable to assume that people who haven't read the book yet and care about the sort of spoiler that might be in a tag or a blurb won't browse HP bookmarks and will temporarily unsubscribe to any HP-related feeds. That's a lot more reasonable, anyway, than expecting people to lock or censor their bookmarks and then go back later and unlock or uncensor them all, by hand, one at a time. :/

Angie

I have yet to delicious any DH stuff, but since my fandom tags are generally pretty vague (no character specific tags or 'death' tags or what have you) I'm not worrying about accidentally spoiling someone-- I would, however, make sure the notes for the bookmarks are spoiler-free.

Not, uh, that I think that's going to help much-- I'd hope anyone who wants to avoid getting spoiled for DH would stay far away from fandom space, because it's almost inevitable someone's going to slip up.

What's your del.icio.us account, out of curiosity?

Unsurprisingly it's "ratcreature". I'm easy to find on all kinds of services. It's mostly SGA though, as that has been my major fandom since I started using it (thus it's about a thousand SGA links with the 500 other links scattered over my two dozen other fandoms, with only fifty or so HP).

That's what tags are for-- to get the ones that pertain to the category you want. :D

I'm fairly specific in my tags because I use them to find stories again, so I can have easily over twenty tags for a longer story, e.g. a decent Farscape novel WIP I read I tagged with:
"farscape au johncrichton aerynsun gilina oneeye actionadventure plotty episoderelated bialarcrais tauvocrais peacekeepers spaceship grayza braca scorpius john/gilina het torture scarrans john/aeryn fighting war mindcontrol virtualreality hallucination angst injury h/c wip"

or a recent SGA AU with:
"sga mckay/sheppard/beckett katreitz perryvic au imperialverse mckay/beckett kink dubcon non-con kolya johnsheppard rodneymckay carsonbeckett radekzelenka samanthacarter jackoneill originalcharacter sheppard/omc sub!sheppard threesome angst bodyguard kidnapping captive fighting sparring injury h/c ancienttech offworld actionadventure plotty siberia"

so I'm fairly sure to spoile with my tags

I mostly tag SGA though, as that is currently my main fandom, so HP spoilers might not be expected. But yeah, I was careful with browsing there myself after DH was leaked in particular, and I guess the fans most vehemently opposed to spoilers are also likely to have read the book quickly.

If I were going to tag a bunch of stuff that I wanted to lock, and then unlock later, I'd add a temporary tag like 'unlock', so that you have a way of easily sorting them out--then it's only a matter of unchecking the ticky box.

Now, I'm kind of the opinion that the folks who trawl del.icio.us sites aren't going to be chuffed one way or the other; it's the most public of sites, and they're probably thick skinned jaded thrill seekers. I honestly don't get that concerned about spoilers in tags, and I'm the worst spoiler nazi there is. I've ended my self-imposed moratorium and media black-out as I finished the book yesterday, but it's really sweet of you to be worried, in general!

I think it's all the dire threats I've seen on my f-list that are cautioning me *g*, and that I really appreciate it myself when others are careful. Like for example with the Serenity movie that opened only months after the US release in cinemas here, yet I wasn't spoiled because my f-list was considerate (well, and because I avoided general Firefly websites and forums).

what's oneeye? That all made sense to me except oneeye. And I would probably read it if it weren't a wip.

Oneeye is the author's pseud.

a question of spoiler etiquette on social bookmarking sites

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