What are your thoughts on SPOILERS?
 

I am against spoilers on IMFDB pages. I try to be as general and generic as I can when writing descriptions.

Bear with me. I have a hypothetical example here:

I personally don't like reading "Character A is killed and then Character B picks up his gun and then is run over by a truck, but before he dies he shoots Character C who then throws the hidden treasure that everyone is looking for, over the cliff, thereby ensuring that no one gets anything ...."

Is that much detail necessary? I am actually AVOIDING reading pages until I can see the movie, just because of that.

I would write:
"Character A uses this gun in the film and Character B later uses the same gun." I don't mention Character C at all because he doesn't use a gun and his death is supposed to be a surprise or a reveal. Why mention it at all?

I actually like IMDB's policy of not allowing spoilers or at least ALERTING readers that information within a page contains spoilers.

This intolerance comes from a lifetime of people (acquaintances) ruining movies for me ... my entire life ;) Thoughts anyone? As an admin I am tempted to either edit spoilers or make warnings for readers on those pages....

I used to write that my pages had spoilers but after a while, I realized that no one else did and they totally cut up the movie, so I just stopped. I always just assumed if you go on this site, you should be aware a page is likely going to spoil things for you. I sympathize with you though, it sucks when a movie you want to see gets spoiled. (I don't look anywhere other than actor ID on IMDB since some dick decided to spoil Gran Torino for everyone).

Usually I end up spoiling it for myself though. :D

If you look at The Mist page, I did warn people that the page spoiled the ending, because all of the guns take place during the ending. Plus, the movie is totally ruined if you know the ending.

And P.S. I really like how the "SPOILERS" bars cover up such info on IMDB. While it could be harder to make pages, such an ability would be cool. I wonder if this site is capable of it.

Generally speaking, "DB"-type Wikis like ours should be assumed to have a high risk of spoilers. However, I do agree that a warning would be best at the beginning of any pages containing them.

Sometimes, it really is impossible to avoid when discussing guns. For instance, I can't talk about the suppressed Beretta 92FS used in "The Departed" without spoiling the ending of the movie.

You can just say "This gun was seen at the end of the film in the hands of Mark Walberg." How can that spoil anything?

YES, That's what I figured. How hard is it NOT to put forth spoilers. Some of the new members put in TONS of extraneous details that are really bad spoilers. Sometimes I just edit them to make the details more generic while still being accurate.

True, but that just seems a little too generic.

Well and done, but here's the thing: IMFDB is a Wiki for identifying firearms in movies. The entire idea of this site is that if somebody's trying to identify a particular firearm they saw in a movie, they come on here. What that means is that generally, they will have already seen in the movie in the first place, and thus know all the spoilers. After all, why would they be trying to ID the guns in a movie unless they had seen the movie already?

Again, don't get me wrong; you are correct that it might be best to warn readers about spoilers at the top of the movie entry. But I think it's still a little too extreme to suggest that we should make things as simple as "Character A uses a Beretta 92F, which is later used by Character B."

Also, there's one other thing to consider: Sometimes the screencaps themselves serve as spoilers. A recent example occurred to me after looking at the "Red Heat" page, where you see a character lying dead with his gun (a Taurus PT99) sitting nearby. Doesn't that by itself tell you something about what happens to the character in the movie?

How is that too generic? How is the reader being cheated out of information? That would only be the case if the reader was confused if the character used multiple guns at the end, but by this time, it is assumed that we have educated the reader as far as recognizing the firearm.

Not everyone has seen a movie before looking at a page. I am (unfortunately) AVOIDING some pages that Gunmaster45 has worked hard on, and have not been able to comment on them (despite his request for input) because I have NOT seen the movie yet. I will see them soon and hopefully not keep him waiting forever ;) Also people, like me for example, are sometimes encouraged to see a movie we would otherwise not see if we see that the film has a slew of interesting firearms. :)

Anyway, that's just IMHO. :D

I have to be careful here since I'm not sure MPM has seen Wanted yet.

You see a screencap of Wesley shooting a main character, kind of hard to not spoil that one.

True, although I think this isn't too likely with most readers. Personally, I'm not in the habit of looking at pages before I've seen the movie, but then again, I've seen so many movies featuring guns in my (short) lifetime that it's rare I find one on here I haven't seen.

But again, don't forget that the images can still ruin surprises for a reader. I really think we just have to accept that by nature of what we do, we're gonna ruin surprises for people who haven't seen movies. So it seems pointless to go to such ridiculous lengths to avoid spoilers.

Oh, yeah, and here's another one: Have you seen a "A History of Violence"? There's a gun in that movie that is used by a particular character. The fact that I even mentioned this character, and the gun he uses, is another spoiler. Telling readers that he's even in the movie ruins a surprise.