A spoiler is a plot point in stories, TV shows or movies where a certain crucial detail being revealed may spoil someones enjoyment of the story if they haven't seen it already. Like say, a character is killed in an unexpected way. It is considered common courtesey to warn about potentially spoiling plot points, so that they do not have to read them if they don't want to. A lot of people like to be surprised when they are watching/reading something. But others are spoiler junkies and like to know everything going in, so advance spoilers are allowed here, but they should be clearly marked and hidden so that those who don't want to read them don't have to. We used to just put in bold text SPOILERS AHEAD!!! and then several lines worth of space, then put the spoiler filled statement there. But for the past while, we have had what are called 'spoiler tags' in the BB formatting code of the forum. These tags will cover whatever is between them with a coloured bar so you can only read what is written there by hilighting the blacked out area with your mouse cursor. It looks like this:
[spoiler]
there are spoilers here! blah blah blah blah...[/spoiler]
Just hilight it like you are going to copy and paste it, and the text will show up in white.
the next post will show how to use them...
