Define Spoiling.

[Sangwa]

I think spoilers are alright if they are presented in a roleplaying manner without revealing too much detailed information. Try imagining your character giving out the info.

Maps would be ok if they are drawn up from the character's experience. Not screenshots because your character does not have a photocamera nor can they float very high in the sky to take sky photos.

Quest spoilers are alright if told in a storylike manner as if your character was reflecting upon his experiences. Not a log or exact repeating of what he said because .. hey I don't even remember what I just typed exactly without reading back, let alone what I last said.

Tips for crafting, fighting, training, etc. should be written in book or story form. Not a list with things your character can't know like "silverweave shortsword: /103 sp 0.1" or "put 27 zinc ores along with 5 tin ones and a rat tail in the furnace and use /combine to get 1 Titanium stock."

... *hopes this makes his idea understandable*

That is what I had in mind as well, and how I will go about things. But currently I can conclude that it's okay to have such informations if they are kept on a level of privacy, whichever nature they are (overly explicit or not.)

[Garile]

hmm I'm just wondering one thing as I read the posts here.

What do the rules say?

Can a guild expect measures taken by the devs if found out? And if so at what point?

Is there an official stand on what a spoiler is and what should be done if someone is "spoilering"?

I mean don't get me wrong I like the community regulating itself to some extent, but what the community finds exeptable and what the rules actually say are sometimes quite different and for a guildleader I think it would be important to know what is debatable and what not. Specially seeing I know there are guilds who definately have trainerlists and questlists and other lists like that.

Also as  personal question I would wonder if giving exact phrases are spoilers. This is a roleplaying game. If it's acceptable to point at the person and tell you can get the quest there why is it not aceptable to tell him what phrase to use to activate it? It's not like those phrases are normal conversation material so I find it rather unrealistic to say thats spoiling when it's really working around a system thats obviously not complete yet.

[Karyuu]

Guilds can keep trainer lists and similar, as long as they are available only to guildmembers. They just can't be around on your guild website or on a public portion of your forums, for anyone to find. I also don't see anything wrong with giving exact phrases to use for NPCs, but again not publicly on websites or forums. In-game is fine.

[Garile]

Thanks for the quick reply Karyuu

[Idoru]

How I see it from this thread and for the entire time ive played the game actually, is that anything goes aslong as you need a password and username to access it and its for internal guild use only.

Saying that, I do have my suspicions that players have joined Elemental Light purely for the information about the game that we have collected and then downloaded it and left the guild. In my personal opinion I think they have missed out on the best thing about guilds in general and that isnt the info and the help you can get but the people you can meet.

[Garile]

hmm true, but obviously a good way to start your own library if you were to start one for your guild, steal one from an other

[Nikodemus]

Guilds can keep trainer lists and similar, as long as they are available only to guildmembers. They just can't be around on your guild website or on a public portion of your forums, for anyone to find. I also don't see anything wrong with giving exact phrases to use for NPCs, but again not publicly on websites or forums. In-game is fine.

Then why don't let it public? I mean, there is a guild of 100 people and they have these spoiling databases, those aren't exactly roleplaying well and most of the time don't think about giving it in RP way.
It is unfair towards people who aren't in guilds, these people are said to not give out spoilers, while they hear about this huge guild. Members of this guild can get everythig faster by unfair spoilers, while the individuals have to work on overything by themselves.
So what may happen? There will appear [organisation], it will be of several guilds, and any individual wanting to join it. Its IC goal very trivial, but they have ther own forums with almost complete database of all spoilers in the game.
Where is the border? we should allow it 10000 people? 100 people? 10? maybe none? There needs to be an answer with some explanation

[Idoru]

It is unfair towards people who aren't in guilds, these people are said to not give out spoilers

Well one of the obvious advantages to being in a guild is you have access to that guilds 'Library'.

[Nikodemus]

IC lbrary, not OOC. Way too man people are still misunderstanding what PS is about. Nobody would even mention about this stuff in other games, but bringing it to PS is wrong. I don't know if it's your case Idoru, but eighter way, if there is any advantage in being in a guild, it has to be IC.

[Bereror]

So what may happen? There will appear [organisation], it will be of several guilds, and any individual wanting to join it. Its IC goal very trivial, but they have ther own forums with almost complete database of all spoilers in the game.
Where is the border? we should allow it 10000 people? 100 people? 10? maybe none? There needs to be an answer with some explanation

Nikodemus,

There is this tiny part of the world called Planshift forums that we have under our control and we don't allow spoliers nor links to spoilers on these forums. We could say that no spoilers are allowed whatsoever, but we would have no ways to enforce that rule, especially when they are hidden and visible to registered members only. This would only harm honest players like Sangwa, who ask first and would remove any spoilers if said no, and do nothing for players who don't care about rules.

So we have chosen to allow them as long as they are available to guild members only. If we see that a guild has them on their main page or they are visible to everybody, we ask them to remove it. If they don't do so, we can remove any links to that page from our forums. But we can't go and modify their web pages, we simply don't have the powers to do so.

[Olympias Latrell]

I think the issue lies with each individual character. Some characters may consider any outside help to be spoiling their journey, whereas other characters may decide that they need help in order to progress. I joined a guild because I found the experience of being in-game and figuring everything out, starting from scratch and finding my own way to be entirely too daunting. The help I recieve from my guild has enhanced my game experience, and meant that I've been a part of Planeshift longer than I might have if I had no help. If solutions and trainer lists etc. are posted in private, in defined areas, and not simply shouted out and made impossible to ignore, then it is up to ME to decide whether I access them or not. Therefore it is up to me (or my character) to decide what is 'spoiling' and what I dont want to look at, or what information will be helpful to me or my characters. Simply, everyone knows that information is out there, its just a matter of deciding whether you want to look for it or not.
I think that spoiling would be posting answers and lists in a place where people couldnt help but see them, so they had no choice but to be instantly inundated with the information. Anything that recquires joining a guild (which to my mind works, in this case, more like a union or co-operative) or actively ASKING someone is no longer spoiling, because you have seeked out the information yourself, that is, you have decided that you need the information in order to progress. As long as people have the choice of whether or not to see information, then any answers are, in my mind, not spoiling- answers to questions are helpful.
Based on my in-game experience so far I would go so far as to say that there is no spoiling in Planeshift at the moment. I say this because there are no maps available in game (apart form the library- but we all know how helpful that is!) and no-one is running around shouting about who trains sword past 30, or what to give a NPC to get a quest. Any information that could be considered to be spoiling has to be actively pursued, there is no chance that a person will accidently 'stumble upon' a complete list of trainers, or the looting potential of each NPC. I think that this is exactly as it should be, and I congratulate the forum moderators, GMs, developers, Guild leaders and every individual player for allowing characters to make up their own mind when it comes to what information they wish to access.

[Nikodemus]

Bereror. I gues that is the way to go, but in one you are wrong. There is something what you (devs) can do. There are many spoilers for the quests because for most people it is the only way to complete them. These people aren't stupid, lack understanding of what is happening around them to not know how to talk with other people. They do know what. But you can't talk like that with NPCs, you are suppose to, but it isn't this way.
Implement the various wishes it was proposed about talking with NPCs. I hear: "this one isn't good solution as it will lead to NPCs answers you shouldn't know". It is said that, even if such idea is helping more than spoiling. And so you can't talk with NPCs as it is supposed to be and so we have spoilers, which for many people are the only ay to talk with NPCs about someting more that how they are or who are they.
So, there is really something you can do about the spoilers.

[Sangwa]

The way I see it the current "typed talk" NPC mode isn't too bright. I haven't completed any quest yet (though I play PS for 3, 4 years) so maybe my opinion shouldn't count as much. (For two reasons. As a player I have little patience for it, and as a character Sangwa doesn't go around doing tasks for other people.)
In my opinion the NPC communication best suited for a game where lots of people will be talking to NPC's is a similar system used by Arcanum, NWN and other RPGs. You have a list of choices that depends on your stats, so you don't have to guess the exact word the NPC wants. Unlike Arcanum and NWN though, these answers shouldn't be expressions or sentences supposedly referred by the character, but instead the description of the overall choice of topic he made. (Example: Gartheiz tells him he's looking for work; Gartheiz mentions how he needs help with finding Rupert's dagger.) That way spoilers about quests would make less sense.

I can see how Olympias is correct about the current healthy state of spoiling in Planeshift. And I'm thankful for Garile, to have requested for an even more substancial answer from some of the members of the PS Team. This has contributed to a more composed perspective of how I should go about spoiling material in the Empire's forums and sites.
I'll still try to treat the information kept on my sources to the best of my skills, even if just to have it feel like a list/map one would have posted in the training grounds, business counter, etc.

[Nikodemus]

sorry if i go too far off-topic, but it looks you Sangwa are continuing what i said about quests.
What you said is not what i meant. I understood already the very base of the quest system won't change, but there are really lots what can be done about it. 
Would be a good change if it was actually the NPC who ask you what you meant insted of giving you stupid answer he doesn't understand you. You say something and the NPC server does a search similiar like we do on these forums and return mathes as questions the NPC ask you. simple as that. What devs don't like about it is that you can get an asnwer you shouldnt normally.. So this amaizing feature, which would make talking with NPCs so much easier, goes to graveyard. - Thats the idea in very short.
But there are also some other features which are being implemented, only for so long we don't see the effects. So we have spoilers instead.

[Jeraphon]

As long as there are exactly precise - dare I even say esoteric - trigger phrases required to complete NPC quests, we'll need spoilers just to make sure that the quests work. I like the testing aspect myself. Consider the following:

Player tries to complete item-delivery quest.
NPC won't accept item in question.
Attempt to converse with NPC by thinking of every related phrase they can think of so that they realize "Player has item I need and can now accept it."
Attempts fail.
Player now assumes quest is broken and submits a bug report, wasting everyone's time trying to replicate bug. Those who know the phrase will come back with "Works for me," further frustrating Player.
(Note: I have yet to submit a bug report, but there's more than one quest where I'm ready to.)

Regarding the person who talked about "give item" instead of "give me item", if someone hadn't told me that, I would have NEVER figured it out, because I was always taught "gimme gimme never get" and was brought up more polite than that. I tried "ask about item" "tell about item" "ask about descriptionofitem" "may I have item" "may I have descriptionofitem" "may I please have item" "may I please have description of item" "I need item" "I need descriptionofitem" "NPCname needs item" "NPCname needs item for itempurpose" "NPCname needs descriptionofitem for itempurpose exactly as stated in quest description"...and so on.

The best way to avoid spoilers is to create a parsing system that doesn't require them.