You know, I think (and have always thought) that the spoiler definition is in the FAQ as a convenience, not as a way of scribing it in stone.

If it weren't there ... would there still be this kerfuffle? Would Jon's cite and the thread headers suffice as a citation that was grandfathered in?

If it wasn't written down at all, would that be better?

I don't see why people are caught up on the idea that the FAQ is at risk of being made law.

edit: or that it was put in the FAQ by silent mistake, or something ...

IOW, nobody noticed (or nobody cared) that word and deed were not the same thing.

But they were the same thing at the time. Everything was a spoiler unless it was a broadcast preview (just as Jon stated way back when). IIRC (and I haven't been able to check because WX was down earlier), the next time the subject came up was when the spoiler light threads were created, which was pretty much supposed to be for casting spoilers of all sorts.

You think so? Didn't we discuss the addition of Gunn to the main credits during the summer of 2000? I could have sworn we did, because I was spoilerfree back then, but I did know about it in advance. I also want to say I knew about Riley going on-contract between S4 and S5 (and about Tara staying off) although I did not know about Dawn.

It's entirely possible I'm counting wrong in my head. (DX can attest I can't count to save my life.) Man, I've been here 3.5 years??

I don't see why people are caught up on the idea that the FAQ is at risk of being made law.

Well, my fear is that people say "Read the FAQ" when you're not sure. If the FAQ doesn't represent current policy/practice, then all those newbies will start out with wrong or simplistic assumptions about things, and we'll get into problems like the varying interpretations we're arguing out now. I mean, in absence of a constitution or something gaudily legal, the FAQ is as close as we have to a topically-organized, formal, vetted Document Of Buffistadom.

The FAQ has some things in it that are reflections of our rules, and as such, I think are well covered by the grandfather clause.

The section on why Willow is so well-liked? NSM.

It seemed clear to me (and isn't that where everything falls apart? seeming clear?) that some things are there because people Frequently Ask Questions about rules, and some things are there because of Questions about pronunciation, or acronyms, and there's no other more rigid connection.

I do reserve the right to stop being "unspeakably cool" without running it by a vote, even after September 20th.

It's entirely possible I'm counting wrong in my head. (DX can attest I can't count to save my life.) Man, I've been here 3.5 years??

I *can* attest to that, Ms. Nutley, because you delurked right after I did in November 2000, which is only a little over 2.5 years ago.

(edit: the Gunn thing is interesting, though. Lemmee go check.)

I do reserve the right to stop being "unspeakably cool" without running it by a vote, even after September 20th.

Nope. It'll never happen.

Despite the language Betsy used in her grandfather clause (gfc) about finding the earliest mention, I don't know if that follows the spirit of her proposal, which was to give consensed decisions the same protection that the moratorium vote gave voted-in decisions.

In this case, where it's a pre-vote element of the FAQ in question, we have to remember that a FAQ is a document that does change with time and did probably changed in ways approved by Buffistas over time. So in this case, if the gfc is called into effect to stop this proposal, wouldn't we be looking not for the first spoiler policy discussions, but instead, the most recent (pre-vote) spoiler policy discussions that resulted in the FAQ as it is today? They may be one in the same. But all this digging at TT may not be looking for what is needed here. I think we'd want to look in recent stuff from WXing, probably in roll your own or beautiful city (or whatever it was)

The challenger has a FAQ entry and the header of the NAFDA threads, both in place and well-used during the period protected.

Short of stone tablets, what else is there?

But what does that have to do with it? That there is a FAQ, and that the FAQ contains a spoiler policy is not in dispute. Our doubt lies in whether or not this specific issue - summertime casting news - was actually addressed in our FAQ's spoiler entry. If someone wants to invoke the gfc to stop this proposal for summertime casting news, that person needs to prove summertime casting announcements about the regular cast were specifically discussed when writing the FAQ. Because if not, gfc wouldn't apply. This isn't an attempt to overturn that FAQ, it's an attempt to address the treatment of summertime news items.

Please consider this: If we had never had a film thread, and all of the spoiler policy only addressed how to treat Television spoilers, and then we got a film thread, would we be able to invoke the gfc to prevent people from adding to the FAQ's spoiler policy, so that it now covered movies? Would we make the film thread posters adhere to the 'once it airs it's free game' rule, simply because spoilers only address tv shows?

That's what this attempt to use the gfc here is like. It seems to me we're applying the gfc in a way it wasn't meant to be applied. As Gar said:

I think the point of the grandfather clause was to avoid refighting battles that had already been thought - not to freeze in place stuff we saw no problem with , and now having experienced it do.

---

Okay, that's me still startled by the idea it all got written down with no discussion, and the silence didn't encompass lack of objection.

Who wrote it?

format edits

"(DX can attest I can't count to save my life.)" I *can* attest to that, Ms. Nutley

Mother. Fucker. Told you. It's a wonder I made it through grade school.

It seemed clear to me (and isn't that where everything falls apart? seeming clear?) that some things are there because people Frequently Ask Questions about rules, and some things are there because of Questions about pronunciation, or acronyms, and there's no other more rigid connection.

Yeah, I guess that's not 100% clear to me. Also, that the FAQ didn't match the rules, at some points in time, either because the rules were actually different (cast changes OK) or there were exceptions (these cast changes OK). Either way, telling people to read the FAQ, when in fact the rules are more subtle than the FAQ attests, means I think we need to revise the FAQ a little.

edited because context is good.

Is it just me or does anyone else shudder at the phrase "Buffista Law"? Just popping in to say, I'm lurkin' on this debate here, and a little bit in Lightbulb. Carry on.

Say we ignore the FAQ for a second.

The statement made in the headers of the NAFDA threads -- is that grandfathered in as a Buffista rule?

I have to admit I'm biased towards the letter of the law -- not because I agree with it (I think the spoiler definition should not include the casting news), but because it's there, spelled out. Because I pointed to it every time someone asked what a spoiler was, and because I didn't question it's validity then.

So I'm looking at this as a change, not as a codification of ad hoc into de jure. I accept the previous as de jure, and the exceptions we had to it beforehand, instead characterising everything as having been according to a rule no one ever discussed or explored the limits of.

Because that "understanding" is precisely what's failing us now.

1) OK, I think it has been establsihed that this has likely been our spoiler policy from the beginning as it is virtually identical to the TT Policy DXMachina "Bureaucracy 2: Like Sartre, Only Longer" Jul 27, 2003 2:43:21 pm PDT and our own earliest cite of it goes back quite a way. It certainly wasn't created by monks in the night and it certainly predates the creation of this board.

If a policy which has, in all likelyhood, existed from our genesis isn't grandfatherable I don't know what is.

2) It has also been establsished that there have been people not wishing to be spoiled by summer casting for at least three years and that a spoiler thread was created to deal with that. DXMachina "Bureaucracy 2: Like Sartre, Only Longer" Jul 27, 2003 1:34:52 pm PDT

So, while there periodically has been un-objected to casting news we have established that summers were not universally exempt from the spoiler policy.