Spoilage, Or the Marking Thereof

To spoil or not to spoil . . . Or, I might say, to mark as spoilage or not to mark . . .

Some time ago, I posted a link to one of my blog posts on my guild forum.  I don't normally do this, but I had told some people in guild chat I was going to go blog about something which frustrated me, so I figured I'd give them the option to read it, if they so chose.

Now, a little background about me:  I like active forums.  I know that a forum with no activity is a forum unlikely to develop any activity.  And so I'm the kind of person who tries to get some activity going on a forum, even in the face of dead air.  The idea is that if there is some activity, people will eventually participate more, while if there is no activity, people will eventually stop checking for any.  (It's like that convenience store which is always out of eggs; after a while, you expect they won't have any and stop checking.  The interesting thing about this is that when the store does decide to stock more eggs, nobody buys them because they didn't think they had any. The store ends up throwing them away at the "sell-by" date and feeling justified to not stock them.)

But even a person who tries to get some activity going in a forum may end up dropping off said activity if absolutely nothing happens in response.  It's easy to start feeling like people view you as a pest or an attention-seeker if you post and post and nothing ever appears in response, despite the view counter increasing.

Usually, when I post something like a link to a video in the "small talk" area of the forum, or in this case, the link to my blog entry, I expect nothing will happen in response.  I'm just trying to put up content so there will be something new when people come to the forum.  But every so often, it is nice to know that someone took the time to look at it and give me the courtesy of a response.

Well, someone did post up something about the link to my blog post.  One of the officers politely requested that I put a spoiler warning if I am going to post something about a class quest.  (Um . . . they weren't class quests . . .)

My first reaction was to think if that was the kind of reaction I was going to get when posting something to the forum, than they could do without my posts.  It's my guild's forum, but I have no responsibility for maintaining it.  (And now that the guild has people starting Operations, they have a little more activity, anyway, as they try to organize things.)

My next reaction was to laugh.  You see, the pages on my blog which get the most hits, by far, are the ones which speak of specific quests.  The one which receives the most is speaking about a class quest.  In fact, people who find that page are frequently looking for guidance on that quest, as indicated by the search terms they use.  (The top 7 search terms which lead people here contain "Vivicar" somewhere.)

I edited my forum post to say that a couple of non-class-specific low-level quests were mentioned and responded to the officer, saying it had been my impression most people had already encountered these quests.  But now, I wonder what on earth I would talk about on that forum.  To be honest, in the time since then, I really haven't posted anything more.  There has seemed to be no point.  ("Hey, let's talk about the game . . . only don't talk about the game, because I don't want to know.")

I recognize there are all kinds of people who play, from those who want to experience everything cold to those who research the most efficient way to accomplish their goals, and I'll respect the request of the officer on the forum to post spoiler warnings when appropriate . . . if it ever happens again . . . But when I'm blogging, the last thing I think about is whether or not I am spoiling the story for someone else.  The burden rests on the head of the reader to figure out if I am going to speak about a specific quest and avert his eyes, if he so chooses.  To adapt an old saying, without the alliteration, "Reader, beware."