Spoiler warnings are vital on the web. With TV broadcast schedules and movie release dates often months, and sometimes even years out of synchronisation, even though something is out, or even old-hat, in your territory, doesn’t mean it is elsewhere.

So it’s a widely accepted good practice to mark any parts of reviews of movies, tv shows, and books which might give away important plot and story elements with “spoilers” warnings.

They do it on IMDb like so:

A simple enough approach, if you rollover the spoiler warning notice, you’ll see the keywords – which can often give away key plot twists and story elements, knowledge of which can reduce your enjoyment of a production.

In this case, if you rollover you see this:

Please note the plot details listed – in clear text – directly above.

Ahem.

As it happens the worst spoiler I’ve ever had was on IMDb. It was for the first Saw movie, which has now been out for  5 years, so I don’t feel any compunction in revealing this. It amounted to just a few words, but they were the title of a thread in the IMDb discussion forums, and was helpfully included on the main listing for the movie. Those words were (something like) “no way could the bad guy play dead for that long.”

Still haven’t seen it.

(And now when I want to check a movie’s rating before deciding if i I want to see it or not, well I certainly don’t go to IMDb.)