NOTE: No Spoilers please!

[Brian G Turner]

I appreciate a number of people watching Game of Thrones will already have read the series A Song of Fire and Ice.

However, there is bound to be a lot of people new to George R R Martin's work through the TV series, and therefore they are unlikely to appreciate spoilers!

While discussions on how the series relates to the books is fine, please don't post spoilers to the Game of Thrones board, thanks.

 

[Boaz]

Excellent point, Brian. I will try.

Conversely, any HBO viewers thinking of glancing over at the GRRM forums, don't. Please read the books first. Unless you've read A Game of Thrones and probably all four books so far, you'll see spoilers in many thread titles.

 

[Ursa major]

Unless you've read A Game of Thrones and probably all four books so far, you'll see spoilers in many thread titles.

True.

But just so that everyone knows the position: even if the word, spoiler, does not appear in a thread's title, this is no guarantee that there will be no spoilers in that thread's posts.

 

[The Imp]

True.

But just so that everyone knows the position: even if the word, spoiler, does not appear in a thread's title, this is no guarantee that there will be no spoilers in that thread's posts.

Assume that the entire GRRM lit forum is one huge spoiler. After you've read the books you'll thank us and understand why we're urging you away.

As for THIS forum.

Please, please, PLEASE, don't ruin anyone's potential enjoyment of the HBO show by talking about events in Game of Thrones that you know will occur because you've read the book. DOn't talk about events in future books. Keep your discussions and comments limited to the latest episode and previous ones. If someone is speculating about something, maybe a scene from "coming next week on GOT" ro someone wondering if such and such will happen, PLEASE don't spill the beans. Think of how much fun it was for you to read AGOT. Allow others the same enjoyment.

Enjoy the series, you're in for a great ride

 

[Marvin]

An interesting occurance happened in a thread after episode 1 series 4 - whereby an innocent humorous throw away comment, made by a contributor who had previously claimed not to have read the books was pounced upon by a moderator and labeled spolier and hidden. Not before being read and enjoyed by another non book reader in the context it was first written. After being changed and marked as a spoiler it then became obvious to both non book readers that they had inadvertently stumbled across a coming truth, therefore doing the SPOILING itself.
A tricky conundrum for you poor mods.

 

[The Imp]

An interesting occurance happened in a thread after episode 1 series 4 - whereby an innocent humorous throw away comment, made by a contributor who had previously claimed not to have read the books was pounced upon by a moderator and labeled spolier and hidden. Not before being read and enjoyed by another non book reader in the context it was first written. After being changed and marked as a spoiler it then became obvious to both non book readers that they had inadvertently stumbled across a coming truth, therefore doing the SPOILING itself.
A tricky conundrum for you poor mods.

As someone who was the assistant lead mod of a large group of professional ssports forums on AOL (many years ago) i can tel you that being a mod is tricky work and sometimes requores the wisdom of Solomon to do properly.

The situation you describe is very perplexing because they couldn't know if the person REALLY hadn't read the books. If you hide it you tell everyone who read it that it was a true spoiler, but if you leave it you run the risk of leaving an intentipnal spoiler up. Without knowing the details, I think I would have left it among the forest of other theories rather than cutting down that one tree and drawing attention to and validating it. The truth though is that there is no right or wrong, and sometimes it's a matter of timing.

Out of curiosity, what was the theory that got taken down?