Meara-time for me. I *think* I edited out the bitchiness in my responses ... but if I failed, please remember it's early here and I am very, very tired, and this whole thing is making me want to bash my head in with a shovel.

except when it got to the point where we knew he had one more ep on his contract, and worked out by elimination which one it was, and therefore went "Why isn't he here yet? When would be the most startling moment for him to appear? Now? Maybe now ... knew it!"

I don't think I was around much at the end of S6, so I don't remember this specific discussion. But honestly? I'm surprised people can keep that kind of thing straight in their heads. I couldn't if my life depended on it. (And besides, like they WOULDN'T bring Giles back for the finale? Please.)

Besides, contracts can ALWAYS be modified. I'm pretty sure Seth Green was signed as a regular for S4, until he decided he wanted to do movies. Similarly, I suspect Tom Lenk got more eps in S7 than were originally in his contract, because they decided they liked Andrew.

I guess for me it just seems absurd to have to tiptoe around a topic that Joss himself has talked about in a major media outlet. It makes me avoid the Angel thread altogether, because I'm afraid I'll let it slip, and really it's impossible to discuss possible happenings for next season without talking about the cast changes.

Susan speaks for me. It does seem like we're posting very little in Angel in general lately. Some of that is probably just summer malaise, but most of it? We can't talk about the Elephant in the Room.

What's frustrating about having to restrain Probably Obvious Spoiler talk to the Spoilers Lite topic? Since I personally don't find that frustrating at all.

Adding a snarkier response to Plei's comprehensive one: Because Spoilers Lite, to put it bluntly, sucks for everyone. You have to white-font everything, post warnings, and be really careful about what you say. It's okay as a place where the unspoiled can go and ask, "I heard ED will be on Angel next season, is that true?", but for real discussion it's worse than useless, in my experience.

Plus, not everyone who knows the Bug Casting Spoilers wants to know everything in Spoilage Light.

Knowing means I have to think about the actors and the world of film during the show, instead of being engaged by the story.

It amazes me you can ignore this, because I *always* think about it. It's just there, when CC started to look pregnant or SMG's barely there in an episode because she's doing something else or I can spot the cuts between the actor and the stunt double. I love the shows, I adore the shows, but I never, ever, forget it's TV, and these are actors doing a job. I'm jealous of you that you can.

I'd be more comfortable with a limited "there's a huge spoiler out there that most people know and want to talk about so can we make an exception this one time" proposal than changing our spoiler policy that has always been clear and simple.

I would agree, except it's likely there *will* be other TV shows the board will talk about in the future, either ME projects or just things a lot of people like. And as I said earlier, the thought of having this discussion more or less yearly? Makes me want to claw my eyes out.

Knowing that the character Fred is coming on as a regular means I know the story line is going in a certain direction.

To me, it just means the character will be there. Period. I don't know if she'll be good or evil or get a lot of screen time or a little or in every episode or killed in the third one. I don't know if she'll shag every character onscreen or be celibate. Those are plot points; AA signing a contract is a fact.

And if Trudy wants a virgin thread, she should get one.

Big Casting Spoiler is a spoiler by anyones definaition.

Except to the people that don't think casting news is a spoiler -- I'm not sure where you're going with this.

(and back there somewhere Dan, I think, mentioned a casting spoiler 2-- I have NO IDEA what this is and would rather stay that way as long as possible)

THAT WAS NOT A SPOILER. It was news about an ME actor in a TV movie. It had nothing to do with AtS, AtS casting, or anything even remotely ME-related. There's no possible way this news could have affected the actor's availability for S5 in any way.

So I'm pretty pissed off that it was considered spoilery enough to delete. Because under spoiler "rules" that paranoid, it's a spoiler that AH will be in American Wedding. Anyone want me to whitefont that?

And that kind of thing became a spoiler with NO discussion sometime after the premiere of Firefly. I'm repeating myself and Plei here, but AA and JAR joining the AtS cast, and ASH becoming recurring on BtVS were not considered spoilers. All this proposal is trying to do is bring the definition of a spoiler back down to the sane level it used to be. We're not changing anything, we're undoing decisions that were never concretely made in the first place.

THAT WAS NOT A SPOILER. It was news about an ME actor in a TV movie.

The way the post was phrased, it could as easily have been a TV series. It wasn't, but if it had been that would have been a spoiler by some people's definition. Not by mine (although I did comment on why people thought it was at the time), and it shouldn't have been deleted.

But I agree, once upon a time, even if it had been a series, it wouldn't have been a spoiler to discuss, and I do want to get things back to that level.

Except to the people that don't think casting news is a spoiler -- I'm not sure where you're going with this.

You're right-- that doesn't make sense.

I was trying to point out that I think there are 2 issues here:

1. There are some really big and seemingly impossible to avoid casting spoilers out there, and people want an exception to the spoiler so that they can be discussed.

2. There seems to have been a culture change where any actor who has ever been on and ME show cannot be discussed in terms of other projects. Also things that used to be OK like discussing that Buffy was coming back after Season 5 are now no longer OK. Under the current spoiler zeitgeist, it seems that we cannot, for example, talk about the casting for Wonder Falls, as it has not aired.

What I am concerned about more is #2.

Just FTR, Daniel's original post that got deleted accidentally included some statements that went beyond just talking about the actor's new project. And the way the article described the project, through no fault of Daniel's, really did give the impression that it was a series, not a one-off.

The JAR and AA arguments don't quite convince me - when they became regulars, they had a) already been introduced on the show, and b) neither of their storylines were really known. Not all cast additions will necessarily follow this pattern.

On Minear's show - I don't have any issue with those characters and actors being discussed, because we don't know them or their world yet. As to Firefly, at what point did we put up the Firefly spoilers thread?

I still believe that it's unlikely that a change in cast this big will come up again in this manner - over the summer, with no in-show background to start it off (as with the introduction of Fred in Pylea), and involving a known character. Brand new, never heard of them before, cast additions are a different matter.

What I'm still confused about it why it's so urgent to move discussion of casting changes, such as it is, to the main threads right now when promos should be appearing in a month's time, more or less. Or why discussion in the Spoiler thread would be so unsatisfactory. I hear mention of people who want to discuss cast changes but don't want to go in the Spoilers thread, but (IIRC) I haven't heard those actual people speak up. And it's only recently that the Spoilers thread started to become spoilery again anyway. So what was stopping people from discussing this subject all summer? I unsubbed last week or so, but up until that point, I saw very little discussion of the topic, so I'm confused as to why it's so important to discuss now.

Brenda, your post assumes that everyone knows someone from Buffy (or Angel's past) is coming to Angel. Which is more than some people do know, as of now, and I think those that don't, don't want to.

We should keep this abstract as possible.

My two cents...

One of the things I keep reading is how the current definition of a spoiler is different than the way things used to be, and that it was established by "consensus". However, the original spoiler usage (I don't think we ever nailed down a definition) was established by the same type of consensus, except it was back at the old (WX) board. The new definition was created in the original set up of the show threads (actually, when Firefly came on board, at which time we were actively trying to codify all of our "consensi".)

I had thought that we had agreed to grandfather in the previous "consensus" and not make changes to them until a certain period of time had elapsed. In fact, IIRC, there was a divisive debate about the whole procedure. I don't know what the elapsed time period was supposed to be, but it seems to me that this call to "return things back the way they were" violates that agreement, unless the time period has passed.

Personally, I try to avoid spoilers, but I don't actively avoid them like the plague. I feel that the Big Casting Spoiler is akin to the "SMG won't be returning" spoiler that was the Elephant in the Room, but I think we should err on the side of caution and try to make things as safe as possible for the spoilerphobe in the show threads, since you can't "unspoil" something after the fact.

I think the problem is that some of our spoiler policies were not adapted by consenses. For example there was never a policy against "anit-spoilers" . Someone just jumped in one day and started complaining about them. Similarly the whole "casting spoiler" thing pretty much slipped in without debate.

Again, I want to point out that the current proposal is extremely moderate. It is not making this a spoiler board. It really is a compromise, drawn straight down the middle between extreme spoiler phope and extreme ho.

It really is a compromise, drawn straight down the middle between extreme spoiler phope and extreme ho.

So spoiler-hos are still apparently limited in their discussion and phobes are exposed to information they don't want.

ita, thanks for pointing that out. I've edited where I can but one bit I just don't know how to say without at least touching on a certain topic. Whitefont there ok?