A policy that says you can discuss major casting changes from the website but not minor casting announcements from the website would be confusing.

Doesn't sound confusing to me. Major casting has been defined as folks listed in the title credits, correct? Not confusing.

AB's unchanging status was immaterial.

Angel is still on Angel! He's still a lead!-- immaterial

Question - if they had announced it during the summer, that MB would be leaving partway through the season, would that count as a spoiler under the new proposal?

No, I don't think so.

Quite frankly, no matter what our spoiler policy, there's nothing to prevent someone coming into even the Ultra Pure Spoiler Virgin thread and posting all over that place about how Orlando Bloom will be leaving the cast of AtS next season, and spoiling the crap out of you.

Oh, well, in that case why have a spoiler policy at all?

Trudy, and I, and some others, are asking that the spoiler rules as they currently stand be respected. That's all. It's not satisfactory for some people, I know, and I hope we can find a way to resolve this. But right now we have a clear policy. The fact that it was violated in the past without a hubbub doesn't mean it wasn't there, or that the fact that some of us are now asking that it be respected should be invalid.

At the root, my problem is this: Spoiled and unspoiled are very different ways of coming at the show. A restrictive spoiler policy means that certain topics are excluded from the threads. A looser policy means that certain people are excluded from the threads, and I want us to be very careful before we go there.

Doesn't sound confusing to me. Major casting has been defined as folks listed in the title credits, correct? Not confusing.

What is confusing is that SOME things from the website are ok and SOME things aren't.

This is less clear than our current long standing policy where ALL things aired are OK and ALL things aired are not.

ASH's semi-departure -- not a spoiler.

AB and JAR being added to the cast -- not spoilers.

This year, everything's a spoiler. Nothing official about our spoiler policy changed, so I want to know what did.

The fact that there weren't loud objections doesn't mean they weren't spoilers.

Nope. I just want a thread that continues the "show or promo" policy we've had all along.

And all we're saying is that including print and radio ads is in keeping with the spirit of that - effectively a semantic change.

Expanding the definition of "on air promo" doesn't even allow us to talk about all of the various casting changes to Angel this year.

Technically, it allows us to talk about one of them.

It's not throwing the doors open.

You left out Katie's interpretation.

Trudy didn't cite Katie's interpretation. I'll admit I disagree with Katie's interpretation (because I said so, and explained precisely why), but that wasn't the issue in the sections Trudy quoted.

The disagreement is that one of you includes the website and one of you does not.

In which case I'm right because I am referring directly to Jim's text. :-)

As it stands now, a medium is either kosher or not.

Ah, okay, if kosher law is to be our model, then I think everything should be spoilerfonted until the last episode airs in Austrailia. Or maybe that's just my issue with the two sets of dishes, etc.

But if it were merely effectively a semantic change, Sean, it wouldn't add any topics to the menu at all.

For Trudy (or Liese or Elena or unnamedlurker), one spoiler is one too many. And when the next one makes the new criteria, then it's two spoilers too many.

In, as currently proposed, all NAFDA threads.