Let's say you are reading the PBS reviews of a book and you come across a review that has in it "This book ends with .........." and then THEY TELL YOU THE ENDING!

I would like to PM the member and ask them to take that sentance out of the review.

Yes, good idea or no, bad idea?

I agree.  I do not think that we should be able to post spoilers on reviews.  That is pretty rude.   

Sara,

Asking them would be a service to all of us who think spoilers shouldnt be in reviews. The worst that could happen is that they say no. The best that could happen is they realize that spoilers in reviews isnt a great way to review a book.

A notation in the Review....SPOILER ALERT or SPOILER AHEAD....might be the proper thing to do.

-RD

Yeah, I was just trying to figure out if other people would be offended if they got a PM asking them to modify their review.

It would be respectful to NOT spoil the ending and I would ask that they alter their review in some way that doesn't spoil it.  I feel the same way when someone describes the condition of their copy of a book in a review even though there's more than one copy of a book made.

Perhaps these can be reported to PBS so as to be marked "Spoiler ahead" after being reviewed?

Oh it depends on the ending. Was it that type of book with an ending such as it would change your mind about reading it? I can think of a couple examples of types of endings I would want to know before reading. Major character death is a big skip for me. It's going to be a subjective matter, as some pople like to know what happens. But even still, should I leave such a review I would put a "spoiler warning" and a "why."

Edit for Forrest's question. Lots of the book reviews with condition in them were from a few years ago before PBS was so big with hundreds of circulating copies of books. I see those "condition reviws" too and always snicker at the dates... 2006 and 2007 etc.

I don't think Spoiler Alert or Ahead would help much.   I normally see the whole review at once unless it is extremely long.    While I normally wouldn't comment on someone else's review, in this case I'd send a PM and suggest she change it.

This question makes me wish for an 'under the fold' type of feature for spoilers included in reviews.  Rather like 'Ignore this member'.  Maybe when members post reviews, the system could ask if spoilers are included...and if so, only the subject line would appear unless members reading the review opted to open the entire review.

I agree with Mary, sometimes book include stuff I would like to know ahead of time, deal breakers like major character death, rape, or other potentially offensive plot elements (most of us have something we really don't like to read).  But like Cozi, once I see the ***spoiler warning*** my eyes have usually skimmed ahead and read it anyway, whether I wanted to know or not!

ETA - Go for it Sara.  At one time I posted a review on Amazon, but went back and changed it b/c somebody let me know it contained spoilers (which Ami discourages).  Forgot about the spoiler thing b/c I was concentrating so hard on getting my thoughts written down, and even tho the comment was rather pissy I did edit my review b/c snarky or not the other person was right.