PathfinderWiki talk:Spoilers

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Spoilers in a 2E world

Given that the results of most APs are spoiled in the 2E Core Rulebook, the current lodestone of the entire system, what's the plan for dealing with that? Future books haven't helped this any. For example, if I want to make a page on the Stasian Technology, introduced in Guns & Gears, I'm kind of SOL unless I just want to flag the entire page as spoilers forever, regardless of how widespread that technology becomes. CadeHerrig (talk) 19:46, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Multiverse theory isn't apperied for that?--Laclale (talk) 06:13, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

At this point, I'm seeing some merit in trying something based on {{Collapsible}} or Extension:Spoilers—a way to mark specific passages as spoilers for specific adventures while leaving the rest of the article safe to read for people who intend to play the adventures in question. With the current system, a single word is sufficient for a whole article to be flagged as spoilers, with no way to distinguish what is spoilers and what is not (and as I've noticed, when a spoiler badge is added, it is there to remain forever), and as more and more adventures get released and subsequently canonised, it's only a matter of time until the only articles that new players can safely read are low-traffic and (relatively) unimportant ones (while the big ones are marked as spoilers for several APs at once). - HTD (talk) 11:12, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Likely time to revive this discussion yet again in light of Template talk:Badges and Template talk:Spoiler.

This is a cyclical discussion going back to the wiki's creation, or at least to the first attempt to revisit it in 2012, and not a new concern (go see the archived discussions linked atop this page for more).

Rather than dump yet another wall of text here or in the Discord, I'm going to leave it at this:

GMs are the only arbiters of spoilers at their tables. Spoiler warnings should exist primarily to inform GMs that certain content could spoil an adventure for their players, so they can then curate and distribute the wiki's content to players themselves. No form of redaction or hidden content is going to facilitate that; it'll only impede a GM.

Many things could and should change about the spoiler policy, but we need to revisit how we define our audience in Project:Scope of the project to ensure that we're clear about whom the policy serves.

Also: Forgotten Realms Wiki, Wookiepedia, and Memory Alpha/Beta—all inspirations for early PathfinderWiki policies—all also revised their spoiler policies around 2008. Memory Alpha admins now review spoiler banners for removal 2 months after the release of a work, Wookiepedia removes theirs 1 month after a work's release, and Memory Beta and FRW stopped using spoiler banners entirely. Those policies are all still those projects' active policies today. -Oznogon (talk) 20:54, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Personally, I think nobody reads an inherently encyclopedic article on something they are concerned to see spoilers for. Movie pages on Wikipedia, for example, don't even mention spoilers because they are assumed by default. Managing spoilers adds extra work for editors with little to no benefit to readers, potentially even serving as an unwanted distraction. I would certainly support the removal of spoilers entirely, or at least setting an expiration date. --Rexert (talk) 22:38, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I would also like to mention that I find it discouraging and unappealing to write articles that contain a big warning sign which essentially tells viewers "Don't read this article!". It's unsurprising that adventure paths are relatively poorly documented, and ceasing the use of spoilers would certainly encourage the primary purpose of the PathfinderWiki—accurate and comprehensive documentation of the Pathfinder setting. --Rexert (talk) 23:10, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

This sounds more like a presentation problem with the spoiler banners. We present them as a deterrent because that was the primary concern a decade ago, but at this point they should just signal that an article documents the ramifications of a canon event that players might experience during an adventure. And an alternative might be to positively feature and indicate when articles are relatively safe resources for players.

But whether we call them spoilers and treat them like deterrents, or as positive communication tools to guide players to safety, or whatever we rationalize as a solution, players still shouldn't be reading articles that spoil plots and encounters of adventures. I want to run players off from reading articles that will hurt their experience with the game or setting, and I feel way worse when I'm not successful and have to hear about it from all sides than I do when I put a spoiler banner on an article.

> I think nobody reads an inherently encyclopedic article on something they are concerned to see spoilers for.

...

> It's unsurprising that adventure paths are relatively poorly documented

This is why I hammer on the Scope of the project's "PFW is for players" bullet point. Accommodating players made sense 15 years ago, even 7 or 8 years ago, but it's proven to be a minefield we can't navigate due to the pace at which Paizo has been pushing canon changes under 2E.

"When I played 1E" wall of text

 

I'd argue even since before 2E, with Return of the Runelords canonizing a lot of past adventure events and the core line change at Adventurer's Guide making the RPG line no longer setting-agnostic.

Through the 1E years, Paizo intentionally avoided resolving the events of Module story arcs or APs. GMs could peel them off and play them in any order, like encapsulated alternate timelines, while Paizo fleshed out and expanded the big picture of Golarion in AP fiction and articles, and in the Campaign Setting and Player Companion lines.

Only PFS resolved and advanced plots and character developments with regularity, and it still existed mostly in its own canon bubble. Core rulebooks were explicitly setting-agnostic and non-canon. If 1E APs are "relatively poorly documented" it's because for the first 12 or so years of the wiki's existence, the vast majority of their events simply hadn't happened and weren't going to happen in canon.

It was thus way more possible to achieve a compromise of documenting the current state of canon in ways that kept players spoiler-free, because outside of PFS the setting was relatively static. Curse of the Crimson Throne was the first big canon-changing event that the wiki had to reckon with, and even if freaking out over Eodred Arabasti II dying seems quaint now, the current spoiler policy evolved out of the fallout from it.

But with nearly 20 years of connective tissue now built up, and edition and revision changes that performed setting-wide canon advancements, and a recently accelerated serialization of APs, adventures, sourcebooks, corebooks, and PFS seasons that all advance each other and the setting with established outcomes for adventures published sometimes within weeks or months of each other, we have to either keep flagging content until almost all of it is covered by warnings, or we give up trying to protect players from spoilers and acknowledge that we're not a spoiler-free player's guide (Paizo gives those away), we're not a resource for lore-friendly PC builds (AoN gives that away), and that it's the GM's job—not ours—to manage their players and arbitrate the setting and spoilers at their table.

Players shouldn't be reading most of PathfinderWiki any more than they should be reading the adventures that their GM's prepping. The prerequisite to fixing the spoiler policy is clarifying that the resource we provide to players is not to them, but their GMs. If GMs are our primary audience, the only spoilers we have to worry about are pre-/early-release content; the policy questions answer themselves. -Oznogon (talk) 02:08, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

> acknowledge that we're not a spoiler-free player's guide (Paizo gives those away), we're not a resource for lore-friendly PC builds (AoN gives that away) and that it's the GM's job—not ours—to manage their players and arbitrate the setting and spoilers at their table.

I think this leaves out some major player-facing uses that AoN, Player's Guides, and the GM cannot adequately substitute. Character backstories, especially at the brainstorming phase, are greatly aided by having a comprehensive and navigable resource on setting lore. As just a single example loosely based on witnessed reality, someone playing Strength of Thousands as a character hailing from Taldor might want to see what their journey to Nantambu would look like by viewing the map, looking at intermediate destinations such as Bloodcove or Solku depending on their route, and then looking for things that they might be interested in integrating into their character's experience. This kind of backstory creation is easier and more rewarding when it involves cooperation between players and GMs, and both the players and GMs have resources to browse. Yet, the player and GM would still likely appreciate if there were warnings when an article describes a major event that occurs during the Strength of Thousands campaign. There is, of course, always going to be a risk that something gets spoiled. But I think, for many tables, this is a risk well worth taking if it means more investment in the campaign setting. Not everyone in the audience can be expected to fall into either the "doesn't care about spoilers" or "will avoid the risk of spoilers at all costs" camps—I believe most users fall somewhere in between—and the wiki should fit this expectation.

I agree that it may be useful to make clear that the wiki is NOT guaranteed to be spoiler free, and encourage GMs to guide player usage if they are worried about spoilers. I recognize the concerns brought up in your essay and I am sympathetic to the frustration of decades of unresolved ambiguity, but I do not think doing away with player-facing spoiler warnings entirely is the answer here. I think going forward, we should still provide spoilers warnings where reasonable even while emphasizing that we cannot be comprehensive with these warnings. -Ravenstone (talk) 16:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

In my opinion, the interconnected nature of PathfinderWiki articles has only one possible outcome—every single page sooner or later becoming flagged as a spoiler.

The article on stone spoils various cities and creatures made of stone, which players should only discover through their GM. The article on elves spoils the history of the ancestry and the events of Earthfall, which players should only discover through their GM. The article on wolves spoils geographical locations and magic items named after or made of wolf parts, which players should only discover through their GM. Your example of a player "viewing the map" would spoil every major and minor settlement and landmark tagged on the map between Taldor and Nantambu.

Should all of this information be deleted from the articles to safeguard players against spoilers, or should all of these pages be marked as spoilers? I think either every single page of this wiki requires a spoiler warning, or none of them do. --Rexert (talk) 16:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

As I tried to convey in my previous response, I think it's important to understand that spoilers are not an "all or nothing" thing, and I would appreciate on some elaboration on why you consider these the only valid options in the dilemma. The things you have mentioned are what I would personally classify as minor to very minor spoilers; things that typically will not greatly impact someone's enjoyment of a campaign, even if you technically do learn something that your character should not have. Major twists that occur during campaigns, such as NPC betrayals or the answers to campaign relevant mysteries, are significantly more disruptive to someone's enjoyment of a campaign. We could focus on only labeling major spoilers. Yes, this will leave a lot of grey area, but that's an inseparable part of maintaining a wiki, and we should not compromise the utility of the wiki just because rules are not as elegantly defined as we would like them to be. -Ravenstone (talk) 17:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

As Oznogon mentioned, whether a spoiler is minor or major is completely subjective. Not just based on the editors' opinions, but even the sources themselves. Personally, I do think spoilers should be "all or nothing", simply because of the way articles are linked together and expanded upon with new information. Any given article that currently contains little to no spoilers will eventually contain major spoilers given enough time, assuming editors continue to document details in a comprehensive manner. The only way to avoid this is to intentionally exclude information, which would defeat the purpose of the PathfinderWiki.

For example, the death of Gorum event discusses the death of a major deity. This has cascading effects throughout hundreds of relevant articles that already existed prior to the event, like Gorum, 4724 AR, Achaekek, First Blade and the entire Universe. It will also effect hundreds of relevant articles of future subjects yet to be documented or released by Paizo, all of which hinge on the aftermath of this event. The only way to protect players from finding out these major spoilers is to either tag every single page as a spoiler, or intentionally avoid expanding relevant pages with information regarding this event. Then pray they don't accidentally notice "Death of Gorum" as one of the options in the search bar if they search for "death", but do notice the spoiler warning on any given article before reading it.

To me, this seems unrealistic and unreasonable. As I mentioned earlier, I would support temporary spoilers on recently released products with a set expiration date. But I would prefer removing spoilers from all PathfinderWiki articles entirely, and perhaps clarify in the perpetually visible left sidebar that every page contains spoilers. --Rexert (talk) 19:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

> There is, of course, always going to be a risk that something gets spoiled. But I think, for many tables, this is a risk well worth taking if it means more investment in the campaign setting.

I want to make it clear that I haven't proposed removing all spoiler banners, or any spoiler banners, or actually proposed anything yet for this policy. I've even specifically called out that some form of notice that an article contains details about or dependent on the outcome of another adventure's events is still valuable.

What I'm leaning very strongly toward is not removing all such notices, but revisiting the policy from a lens that is concerned primarily with helping GMs build campaigns and help their players, instead of trying to thread an already small and perpetually shrinking needle of protecting all permutations of players from all potential spoilers.

> We could focus on only labeling major spoilers. Yes, this will leave a lot of grey area, but that's an inseparable part of maintaining a wiki, and we should not compromise the utility of the wiki just because rules are not as elegantly defined as we would like them to be.

"Major" or "minor" to whom? The rules are fundamentally undefinable; aside from the fact that they aren't ours to define, "minor" and "major" spoiler depends entirely on the adventure being played.

A table running Rise of the Runelords, a table running Curse of the Crimson Throne, a table running Shattered Star, a table running Return of the Runelords, a 2E table running Rusthenge or Shadows at Sundown or Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, a 1E table running The Godsmouth Heresy or The Waking Rune, and a home campaign running Varisia but not using a published adventure, are all going to have different definitions of what constitutes "major spoilers" with regard to Sorshen, Belimarius, Karzoug, Krune, Alaznist, runewells, sin magic, the Peacock Spirit, Lissala, New Thassilon, Crystilan, etc.

Basic facts about the state of the Inner Sea region in World Guide onward spoil major events in each of those 1E adventures, and that book's intended to be read by players. Acknowledging that still doesn't change the fact that the only person who can accurately define player spoilers for any given adventure is that table's GM.

We can help GMs with wiki content that signals when it depicts details from or the resolution of an adventure they might be running, but blaring alarms sufficiently loud enough to run players off every time they might be spoiled doesn't do that either. It just puts players and GMs alike off of using or recommending the wiki.

Even if it was possible for the wiki to consistently define what a player spoiler might constitute a decade ago, when the setting itself was much more modular and compartmentalized, we are fully incapable of it now without diverting work away from or compromising the more useful task of fully, clearly, and accurately documenting the setting's current state. -Oznogon (talk) 18:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Separately regarding this example:

> As just a single example loosely based on witnessed reality, someone playing Strength of Thousands as a character hailing from Taldor might want to see what their journey to Nantambu would look like by viewing the map, looking at intermediate destinations such as Bloodcove or Solku depending on their route, and then looking for things that they might be interested in integrating into their character's experience.

The player should ask the GM for information, and the GM should give the player the relevant information. Period. Doesn't matter if the source is an official sourcebook, a published adventure, the GM's own campaign notes, a YouTube video, a random table, AoN, or PathfinderWiki. The GM is the only arbiter of this information; what's published, which is what the wiki reflects, might not even be relevant to their interpretation or version of Golarion, or the past events of their campaign.

The wiki should notify GMs of details that might spoil part of a published adventure if shared with players, so they can decide whether to use it and present it to players, and I think we agree on this. My argument is that the wiki should not also bend over backwards to deter players from specific sections or articles that might do so; Paizo doesn't do this in published adventures because it's clear those are for the GM to interpret for players. If PathfinderWiki's mission is to document the entirety of the setting, it should be the same kind of resource as a published adventure, not a spoiler-avoidant player's guide.

If a GM wouldn't hand over the AP issue for a player to flip through at will, they shouldn't point players to PathfinderWiki to do the same. -Oznogon (talk) 18:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Noting that even Project:Point of view states that PathfinderWiki's point of view is the same as that of a GM, not a player. Emphasis mine:

> In some cases, information appears in Pathfinder products which is made clear to be highly esoteric, or entirely unknown due to the passage of time. While in theory these things are not known to anyone within the Pathfinder universe, PathfinderWiki's POV is all-knowing, just like a Game Master or reader of Pathfinder fiction.

There is no practical way to reconcile that with enforced player spoiler safety. -Oznogon (talk) 04:39, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Remove or limit the policy

The previous discussion contains many great points, so I've compiled a short list.

• What counts as a spoiler is completely subjective, not just based on editors or readers, but even the sources themselves. As the Pathfinder setting evolves, former major spoilers become basic facts that other canon content is built on top of. For example, Return of the Runelords is built on top of Rise of the Runelords.

• PathfinderWiki articles are thoroughly interconnected—detailing characters, organizations, locations, items and other subjects within the same pages. A spoiler in any one connection results in all other connections becoming affected by spoilers, leading to all articles inevitably containing spoilers. For example, the rhinoceros article mentions that "Rhinoceroses were the sacred animals of Gorum."

• The Project:Point of view policy explicitly states: "PathfinderWiki's POV is all-knowing, just like a Game Master". This clarifies that the PathfinderWiki is not for players. Every page on the PathfinderWiki is guaranteed to contain information that only a game master is intended to know. For example, a player who wishes to play the ranger class would find out about the "Chernasardo Rangers of the Fangwood forest" who are fighting "Molthuni armies for their freedom."

• Anyone who reads an encyclopedic article should expect it to contain spoilers by default, and most other wiki pages have no spoiler tags, or limited-time spoiler tags for this reason. For example, the Wikipedia page for The Electric State movie, released two weeks ago, does not have a spoiler tag. While Wookieepedia only spoilers information until one month after it's published.

• Game Masters are the only arbiters of spoilers at their tables. No other source can define what players should or shouldn't see. Combined with the previous point, this means spoilers do more to interrupt readers than to protect them. Additionally, it means wasted time and effort for the editors.

• Creating articles that require a spoiler banner is inherently discouraging. It feels like a waste of time to write something that begins with a big, bold sign saying "Don't read this!". I don't think it's a coincidence that there are several Rival Academies articles published already, only a month after the book's release, while the Abomination Vaults adventure path remains largely untouched four years later.

For these reasons, and many more discussed above, I propose either deleting this policy and all spoiler tags on the PathfinderWiki, or, at the very least, imposing a time limit for all spoilers based on when they are published. In the case of a time limit, I think it should not exceed three months, although personally, I would prefer no spoilers at all. --Rexert (talk) 23:52, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd approve of time-limited spoiler banners. Paizo releases products and PFS scenarios monthly, so I'd vote for a spoiler banner time limit of one month from a product's "official" distributor street date.

Any existing spoiler notices about products that are more than a month old should be removed, and any sources more than a month old should not have spoiler banners. Any exceptions would need consensus on a case-by-case basis. (For instance, Willowshore and subjects around Season of Ghosts might keep prominent spoiler banners until a canon resolution is published in a work outside of that AP, simply because of the clearly exceptional nature of that AP's plot.)

If we use a mechanism similar to Template:Announced/by date, the time limit can be made self-enforcing as a {{Spoiler}} parameter.

Any policy should be accompanied by a main page notice that PathfinderWiki articles can include spoilers that lack warnings, similar to Forgotten Realms Wiki.

(The correlation of spoilers to a lack of contribution doesn't hold up, IMO. I'm not interested in documenting AV, other active editors haven't shown interest in documenting it, so it's not documented. Shadow in the Sky's Riddleport article from 2008 is a primary source for a significant city that's featured in multiple APs. It doesn't contain spoilers, and almost all of that AP is arguably no longer canon anyway. Most of it hasn't been incorporated simply because nobody's bothered to do it.

I don't doubt that you likely feel that spoilers are a detriment to you, but experience suggests that PFW lacks contributions because it lacks contributors. Getting an account is a high-friction process, and contributing is a difficult, time-consuming, technically demanding, and typically unrewarding act that requires a proficiency in reading and writing English, money to spend on primarily GM-targeted books, and free time to spend reproducing non-verbatim text from those books instead of actually playing the game they're designed for, without compensation, solely for the benefit of people you'll likely never meet. Nearly all of the few people who meet those criteria aren't going to spend significant amounts of that time contributing content that doesn't interest them.

The people that spoilers primarily deter are players who can't tolerate spoilers, and rightfully so, because they probably shouldn't be reading or editing a wiki containing content from GM resources anyway. The current spoiler policy doesn't serve them well either; anything that acknowledges that is an improvement.) -Oznogon (talk) 04:21, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Then I suppose I speak on my behalf alone, but one of the reasons I haven't written more about the Abomination Vaults adventure path is due to the spoiler policy. Regardless, I approve a one-month time limit on spoilers from a product's official distribution date, and the removal of all spoilers currently present on PathfinderWiki that exceed this limit. --Rexert (talk) 15:00, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Opposed. Speaking as someone who managed to ruin a major revelation from Book 6 of Age of Ashes while researching for my character's background, I wish our spoiler warnings were more prominent. And I played it long after it came out. I'm playing Season of Ghosts right now and have managed not to look at anything about it because I know by reputation that it is SUPER-susceptible to having "The Big Reveal" spoiled. I think it's probably worth keeping perpetual spoiler tags on central plot hooks that entire adventure paths are built around. Apart from that, I think the one-month limit makes sense. --Volfied (talk) 18:27, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I am Agreed on the policy of time-limiting spoilers, placing a more prominent warning that all pages can and do present spoilers and that readers should check with their GMs for all information about an ongoing campaign, and leaving a possibility to bypass the time-limiting of certain spoilers for very significant narrative reveals in fiction or adventures. If an article relates to a big reveal about an AP big-bad, for example, maybe that spoiler tag is permanent. In any case, I think the policy as it has stood for years doesn't really serve anyone and is more of a hindrance than a benefit, and change is in order. — Yoda8myhead (talk) 19:07, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Partial Agree. For notes, I am speaking from the perspective of a deeply enfranchised, long-term player and GM. I believe that the PFW should have a big "Contains Spoilers" banner up top at most, and nothing in the articles. I have several points.

* The setting is a living, multi-faceted, multi-threaded literary setting. This is not Greyhawk, where basically nothing changes. This is not a linear book or video game series, where you can gate spoilers by reading order or where there is limited information. We have six and change streams of new canon information perpetually building upon itself and growing and weaving together (core books, lost omens books, APs, adventures, society, fiction, and misc sources like blog posts and live streams) It's too big. It's too intermeshed. Trying to keep the ending of Night of the Grey Death a secret when Paizo is assuredly going to spoil it in Shining Kingdoms is a fool's errand. Touching any product spoils another.

* Paizo is not subtle. Product descriptions and blurbs spoil stuff constantly. Live streams and blog posts spoil stuff. Interacting with Paizo as a publishing entity / online presence is to be spoiled.

* Anything less than a cursory automated system is asking for too much work. This is the partial agree. I would accept a "hey this article has been edited recently watch out!" thing. Actually going around and manually adding temp banners to pages when updated? Disgust. And if it's just going to be a "hey this MIGHT have spoilers, or someone might have moved a comma!", I'd rather just not do anything or throw a notice at the top that we spoil.

* We are committed to an in-world perspective. Things change. That ought be recorded and noted and cited.

No spoilers. If spoilers, just a banner. If more than a banner, automated "hey this has been edited in the last week" notice.

CadeHerrig (talk) 20:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I am Opposed. I've been using the wiki since before we had our current policy of in-line spoilers, and I before the in-line spoilers I regularly found myself spoiled for events I wasn't expecting to learn about, despite not reading pages of the wiki straightforwardly associated with the spoiled content. This is an inevitable problem, I'm fully aware - if the wiki is up-to-date, there will be unexpected information sneaking in, and a wiki has to assume that the reader has reasonably prepared for the presence of plausible spoilers on a page. If you read the synopsis of an adventure, it's your responsibility if you didn't want to be spoiled for that adventure. However, there have previously been fairly egregious examples where a reasonable audience wouldn't expect it - if a seemingly-unrelated article spoils significant parts of a pre-published adventure, we should have an in-line spoiler warning people about this, just like the Mengkare page does currently. The difference between our in-line spoilers now and a time-limited spoiler removal system (or the previous system's header spoiler warning, or the alternate suggestion here of simply removing all spoiler warnings) is significant in this case, and would substantially affect both my use case for the wiki, and the use case for many of the players at my tables. This is inherently subjective, and I'm aware of that - we're never going to get this perfect for everyone, but we can still limit the most egregious situations of accidentally spoilering yourself for a significant plot moment in an AP. One of the primary arguments in favour of removing/limiting spoiler warnings on the wiki is the argument that players should not be reading the wiki; I disagree substantially with this argument, as it assumes a very specific setup: a binary either-player-or-GM situation that may have been more true in the past, but is increasingly uncommon in modern gaming, at least in my experience. I understand the argument that if you are a player in one single long-term game, you should ask your GM what is spoilers or not, and only read material they say is safe to read. However, this argument is not applicable to situations where you are not a player for a single long-term game; if you're playing PFS, there is no GM to ask. You simply have to try and figure out what is appropriate or not to read yourself, and getting accidentally spoiled for an AP you were hoping to play at some point is a frustrating event that happened to too many of my friends before we introduced in-line spoilers. Similarly, if you're both a player and a GM, maintaining our policy of in-line spoilers will help prevent you being unreasonably spoiled for an adventure you are playing while researching information for the one you are running. In my personal experience across my 4 currently-active APs I am involved in, no GMs are involved who aren't also players, and roughly half the players also regularly GM. One cannot rely on an assumption that players and GMs have no overlap as an argument for removing spoilers from the wiki if there is substantial overlap between these groups. Arcaian (talk) 20:53, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

One of the primary arguments in favour of removing/limiting spoiler warnings on the wiki is the argument that players should not be reading the wiki; I disagree substantially with this argument, as it assumes a very specific setup: a binary either-player-or-GM situation that may have been more true in the past, but is increasingly uncommon in modern gaming, at least in my experience.

It does not assume a binary situation, and it comes from my own perspective of playing and GMing simultaneously.

The argument instead asserts that the GM of any given table is the only person who has the right and authority to determine what constitutes a spoiler at their table. Facts on PathfinderWiki that are flagged as spoilers might not be spoilers, and vice versa. This does not change when the GM is also a player at another table at the same time; only the GM of that other table can determine what constitutes a spoiler for their players. Even a GM reading or contributing to PathfinderWiki has to understand that doing so will expose them to unflagged information that could spoil things they might encounter as a player. As a GM, they should also already know this is the case because PathfinderWiki tells them that any article can already contain unflagged spoilers, with or without any changes to the existing Spoiler policy.

A GM running Rise of the Runelords while simultaneously playing a character in a Return of the Runelords campaign has very different expectations of spoilers as a player/GM doing the opposite. A GM running Prey for Death who chooses a god other than Gorum to die, as the AP explicitly allows GMs to do (page 9), will have a vastly different definition of spoilers than someone playing at their table who's also running the same adventure precisely as written/canon at another table—a canon outcome of which is already assumed in War of Immortals and Divine Mysteries, both books that players and GMs alike can read.

The point is that using PathfinderWiki as a spoiler-averse player is not and cannot be supported, because PathfinderWiki is not your table's GM. No number, size, or application of spoiler warnings will be sufficient to protect all players, or even most players, from critical spoilers, regardless of how many other tables a given player is running or playing with at any given time.

For example, War of Immortals—a book that includes player options and is intended to be read by players—partially, but effectively, spoils the Mengkare reveal in Age of Ashes held up as an example. It is still the responsibility of a GM running Age of Ashes, or any adventure, to determine and provide appropriate sources for their players to use to create characters, including but not limited to PathfinderWiki. We can, and should, inform GMs through source references and banners for recently published products, but we also cannot accurately know or effectively presume what spoiler-containing official published works a player can access, either.

I cannot speak with authority to PFS, but I can only presume at least regional differences are at play, because I know I could ask (and have asked) PFS GMs and VOs to suggest or warn against specific sources as useful for character creation, including but not limited to PathfinderWiki. I would be upset if a PFS GM refused to provide that information. (I also know that a player can both play and run the same PFS scenario, simultaneously or otherwise—at which point PathfinderWiki spoilers are the least of their concerns.) -Oznogon (talk) 21:42, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

To summarize feedback on this proposal so far:

• Four users, including two administrators, support this proposal. Two users oppose it.
• Users who support this proposal generally prefer time-limited spoilers over removing spoilers entirely, with the option to leave some of the most significant spoiler warnings up permanently on a case-by-case basis.
• Users who support this proposal also desire the addition of a prominent spoiler warning that indicates all pages of PathfinderWiki contain spoilers, rather than maintaining spoiler warnings on each page individually.
• The only proposed spoiler time-limit duration so far is one month from a product's official distribution date. --Rexert (talk) 10:39, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

As an extremely spoiler-averse player, I would find it easier to have a general overarching spoiler warning for the entire Wiki than to look for specific spoiler warnings on each page. This may sound counter-intuitive, but in my 14 years of play I have only played in 7 APs/scenarios, so I'm not concerned about spoilers for a considerable percentage of the adventure paths.

Conversely, I find my characters and the setting come to life much more easily and realistically when I have a wealth of lore to call on. I am lucky to have a GM who has a very large collection of lore and setting books that I can use to draw on during character creation, but for those who don't have that level of access to the lore, the Wiki provides the perfect alternative.

Spoilers for APs aren't contained only within those APs themselves. I know that the lore post-Rise of the Runelords, for example, assumes that Karzoug was defeated. That doesn't mean that when we played it through, we were guaranteed a victory. There's a continuity within Golarion itself, and a separate continuity at each table, for each AP. Setting the expectation upfront with users that the Wiki reflects Golarion's internal continuity (and that their game play experience, at their table, could well be different) is a more achievable goal.

Realistically, Paizo produces more content than most tables can hope to keep up with. Therefore, for GMs and players alike, keeping up to date with events on Golarion within any specific timescale is not going to be possible for everyone, and there will always be a strong likelihood that GMs will bring APs to their tables that have been published years and even decades ago. There is no way to time-bind expectations regarding spoilers that will work for the majority. While time limits on spoilers work well for TV shows and movies, they cannot be applied in the same way for a setting like Golarion. Mariel Obeth (talk) 18:07, 18 April 2025 (UTC)