That seems even more complicated to me. Most forums offer a welcome mail by default.

You can't protect people from themselves.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we just say: As soon as the episode airs in Britain, its contents are no longer considered spoilers? It is a British show after all, and this is a British forum, isn't it?

And there are means of watching the episodes when they are aired in Britain, even when you are not living there (like me).

Don't get me wrong, I think the offer the Boss made was terribly nice, but I feel like we are putting too much efford into ""protecting" people from spoilers after 1/1/14, and by that, we are also putting our mods in a very uncomfortable position.

That's the spirit!

That was my original idea, Schmiezi and KP. I cannot decide this on my own but the idea of spending my day chasing possible spoilers for weeks is quite appalling, thh. 

This was not meant as a complaint. I just think it will be quite difficult and I cannot do this on my own. And I want to have some fun, too. 

I think Schmiezi raised a very valid point here though: Once the episodes have been aired in the UK , their content can't really be considered to be spoilers anymore, can it? It's all out in the open then, and yes, it definitely is crap that not all of us will be able to see it right away. But nevertheless... it's officially released then and you will find every last detail about it on the internet somewhere only a few minutes later. It's probably illusive that we will be able to keep it away from the forum (or in the repsective threads). And I absolutely see Susi's point... the mods can't be expected to hunt spoilers down for weeks.  

In order to keep everything completey "clean", we would also have to make spoiler-free titles for the actual S3 discussion threads, for example (so nobody can accidentally read a spoiler while scrolling past that part of the forum). Avatars and signatures would constantly have to be checked, and so on. We would also have to agree on what is allowed. Some people might only not want to know about major plot points, others won't even want to see official promo pics. Even a comment that gives away if the ending of an episode was happy or sad might be considered a spoiler.

Personally, I think we are all responsible for what we read.  If we don't want to read anything before we've seen it, it's up to us individually not to go into a place where it might be discussed.  That includes going into spoiler threads before an episode has aired and going into the forum afterwards.  I don't think it should be on the mods to protect people from something they don't want to know, because that varies from person to person and there's no way to be fair to everyone in that case.  Maybe put up a banner at the top saying "Episode 1 has aired and is being discussed" at the top and that gives everyone the knowledge that they can turn away if they wish.  We've always had a big spoiler warning on the spoiler threads, so I think a warning at the top will work.

As long as threads are flagged up as having spoilers then folk can decide whether to avoid them.