Spoiler policy for MLP:FiM S9

Here's how I'll be handling things on Louder Yay this year. This may be tweaked a bit as the year goes on, but I expect it to be roughly the same all season.

In brief, I'll do my best to avoid spoiling people on what's coming up – but I won't have a long spoiler blackout after Discovery Family has aired an episode. Once I've written up the episode review, I'll consider that episode fair game. This is consistent with what I've done in the past and is roughly what I do on Twitter, too. Since the reviews generally appear on Monday at 8am UK time, that will give people around 40 hours to catch up. Because of the way this blog works, a long spoiler blackout period is not practical.

I do reserve the right to make changes to this policy if it becomes unsustainable; I'm not really willing to avoid writing anything at all above the break! If we get another situation like with Twilicorn, which was pretty much an open secret months in advance, things may get awkward. On the other hand, if we get another lot of leaked material as with S8, discussion of that I will try to hide under cuts. I'll do my best to give everyone a heads-up if I need to change anything, at any rate.

Officially sanctioned previews such as trailers and synopses will be handled on a case-by-case basis. I don't personally consider those spoilers, but some people do and I'd like to respect that. The recent S9 trailer was embedded above the break, since its thumbnail revealed only its April start date – that's an example of the sort of non-plot-related information I will not consider spoilery. However, the content of the trailer was definitely spoilery, so I made sure to discuss that only after a page break and with a prominent warning.

The comments sections are not something I can realistically pre-moderate, so please bear that in mind if you read those. I do hope that commenters will be considerate, but I am not going to place any outright restrictions on them – except that I will delete comments with really blatant spoilers of the "Chrysalis is a changeling!" or "Twilight's tree gets blown up!" type. Blogger doesn't allow me to edit comments, so I can't just remove the offending word or phrase and leave the rest intact.

I hope that's clear. As ever, I'm open to suggestions and questions about all this.