A seasonal reminder about race spoilers

Chips Lovell

Hello all,
The cycling season is underway now and we've got our first big stage race coming up this weekend. I'd just like to remind everyone about the rules regarding race spoilers.

We've tweaked the rules a little bit recently to allow people to post information about one-day races in race specific threads without spoiler tags.

3. Threads about televised racing

Spoiler tags are used hide commentary about race results from boardsies who haven't watched a race live and are waiting to catch up later in the day. If you don't know what a spoiler tag is, find out. If you break the rules on spoilers, expect severe punishment. We wait all year to follow the big races so don't ruin it by being thoughtless.

• For non-stage-specific threads about stage races (e.g. "TdF 2011"), use spoiler tags until midnight.
• For one-day races, expect threads to contain spoilers once the race has begun. Please endevour to use spoiler warnings in the thread title.
• IIn threads about specific stages of stage races ("Paris-Nice 2010 Stage 3") or one day races don't use spoiler tags. If you haven't seen the race, don't open the thread. Don't put any information about the result, either with or without spoiler tags in the first post, since the mouse-over feature doesn't work on spoiler tags.
• Don't post anything which even hints at a same-day race result in a non-stage or race specific thread before midnight. For instance: re-opening the Jens Voight thread with a link to Paris-Nice results, or creating a thread named "Vuelta stage win reported on RTE *Spoilers ahead*" which hints that an Irish rider has won.
• If you follow the above rules, there is no need to create "contains spoilers" type threads. This is ambiguous since one person's spoiler is another persons spoiler tag.

To sum up. Use spoiler tags until midnight unless you are posting in a one-day race or stage specific thread.

Please remember that a lot of users can't watch races live and don't want to have to avoid the forum entirely before they catch up. Race spoilers are one of the biggest sources of complaints to moderators, so please be considerate to your fellow forum users.

Thanks