Just what do the SPOILER ALERT tags mean on GateWorld news stories? Here’s a handy guide, so that you will know which news items you want to read — and which you want to stay away from.
Every news item on the site is graded as to its spoiler content, using this scale:
NONE – If a news story does not include any plot spoilers, in our judgment, the ALERT label will not appear at all.
LOW – The report includes very minor spoilers, but enough that it’s worth mentioning. No major plot points or revelations.
MODERATE – The report includes some story details, but nothing that would be considered major.
HIGH – The report includes significant details about plot points. Read it only if you want to know what is going to happen.
Now just what constitutes a spoiler? That often differs from person to person. Something we have tagged as moderately spoilery, you may consider no big deal. Or we might not mark something as a spoiler at all, and have some readers still think that we’ve ruined an element of the episode.
In our judgment, a piece of information is a spoiler only if it pertains to a plot point in a direct way. Those 1-sentence loglines that you would read in a TV viewing guide might be tagged LOW, or they might not be tagged as spoilers at all. “Daniel Jackson visits Atlantis” is nothing more than you’d learn if you hit the “Info” button on your remote and looked at the channel guide, or watched the network’s teaser for the upcoming episode. We assume that the average television viewer is going to come across this shallow level of information on the storyline before they watch it. “Daniel Jackson visits Atlantis and is abducted by advanced alien warriors” goes much farther, and would be regarded as a spoiler.
The appearance of an actor we do not deem a spoiler: Michael Shanks guest stars in ‘First Contact’
The appearance of a character or race we do not deem a spoiler: Travelers return in season finale
The appearance of a character or race believed to be dead, or which would otherwise spoil a deliberate revelation in the episode, IS a spoiler: Asgard not so extinct, after all or Martouf returns in ‘Ripple Effect’!
Your mileage may vary. So, in short: Reader Beware. We do our best to responsibly warn you about the spoiler content of a story before you read it, but no system is perfect. If you don’t want to know anything about an unaired episode, don’t read even stories marked LOW. If you consider even casting news to be spoilers, you might want to play it safe and avoid visiting any Stargate-related Web sites or discussion boards until the episode(s) has aired.
One more thing about spoilers: GateWorld’s spoiler policy is that we will not reveal anything from the fourth or fifth acts of the episode (approximately the final 20 minutes, when aired) when we can reasonably determine it from the information available. So even stories marked HIGH will never spoil the end of the episode, or other late-act revelations.
This should give you a little insight into how we judge what tidbits are and are not spoilers. We hope that you find the SPOILER ALERT labeling system helpful!
