Since this seems to come up every few months, I want to talk about my own personal beliefs about spoilers.
I have to wrestle with spoiler ethics all the time. What are you allowed to say in a Tweet or in a Facebook status? Should everything on LJ go under a cut? What should I allow as a moderator during a panel discussion?
1- If it's in a press release or interview, it's fair game. The idea behind the press release is to create publicity for the property. They want you to talk about it.
2- Rumors spoil. It doesn't matter how many set photos leaked. If the makers of a property wanted you to know, they would have told you.
3- It's not fair to talk about an episode, movie, or book until everybody had a chance to legally experience this. I got a lot of groans during Odd Con when I announced that we wouldn't be talking about "The Next Doctor" or "Planet of the Dead." The eventual compromise was that I saved it until the end and gave people the chance to leave.
4- Along with that, you need to give people at least a week with a TV show and two weeks with a movie. You can't expect everybody to watch these things the moment they premiere. As for books, I always hide spoilers. It's not unusual for people to read a book years after its release.
So what do you think about spoilers?
