Let me start by saying that I have been visiting this site for longer than I can remember. I love this site and all of the content that it provides (well, most). Lately however, I've run into real problems with front page headlines, in some cases in conjunction with the thumbnail image and summary, containing spoilers that the only way I could have avoided is not visiting the site at all. Obviously I want to continue visiting the site, so I've come up with an ideal solution.
I think the reason this is becoming more of a problem recently is the advent of excellent comic book television. Arrow, The Flash and SHIELD are (in my opinion) all fantastic at the moment and I hear Constantine, Agent Carter and iZombie are pretty good too (never seen them). Living outside of the USA I get these shows aired a little later than the majority of folks on this site and this has led to my problem. Plot points in these shows are being spoiled in the headlines/teasers/thumbnails of this site. The biggest example and the impetus for this editorial, was the mid-season finale of Arrow. Now I won't spoil what happend there in case anybody still hasn't seen it (how ironic would that be) but there is a pretty major plot twist at the very end of the episode that should have been an awesome moment. Should have been and would have been, if I hadn't known what was coming from simply browsing the front page of this website. I knew what was coming and it ruined it for me, and I was admittedly way more gutted than I should have been. To make matters worse, a nearly identical thing happend with the revelation in the last few minutes of The Flash's mid-season finale. AND with the identitiy of Skye in AOS. More recently, Arrow and The Flash returned to television in the States much sooner than anywhere else, and I find myself once again stumbling onto plot points that I would much rather not have known. I can't be the only person living across the pond (or anywhere else in the world) for whom this is a problem. So what is the solution?
My ideal solution requires a technical know-how that I don't have, as well as possibly a lot of work from the people behind the scenes here at CBM (I have no idea how this website works). Basically, it should be possible to filter the news that appears on the front page by category. For example, I could set up a filter which allows me to see all of the news that I would usually see on CBM but excludes any articles about Arrow. Or a filter that shows me news articles on GOTG and CA: CW but doesn't show me anything to do with AOS. It would work on a checkbox system. A list similar to the index page could be made, but with checkboxes (as in the banner image at the top of this article). I would then check the box of each movie or television show that I am happy to see articles about and then save my preferences as part of my CBM account. Then, on return to the homepage or alternatively a custom news page, only stories concerning those properties which I have ticked will appear. Anything to do with Arrow, The Flash or AOS I would leave unticked and would not appear on the news page. That way I can continue to visit this amazing website without having to be worried about seeing spoilers for shows that I know in my country air a little later than in the USA.
This solution can of course apply to movies too. Different countries will have different release dates for movies and using the check-box method outlined above, individuals can still visit CBM with less chance of being spoiled on movies that they haven't had a chance to see yet. As well as helping to avoid spoilers, this could also be used to filter based on interest. For example, if I didn't care at all about Ant-Man (which I very much do) I could simply untick Ant-Man from my preferences list and no more articles regarding Ant-Man would appear until I decide to change my preferences.
Now of course for this to work (if it is even possible) would mean that every article that is written would have to be assigned to a category or a property such as BvS: DOJ or Black Panther. As far as I'm aware, this is already the case since I can search for BvS in the index page and then all articles regarding BvS appear. All I am asking for, is a way of filtering out certain properties so that I can surf CBM a much more relaxed human being. I truly don't know if setting up such a system where content can be filtered by category is possible, but I do know that as the #1 comic book movie news website, we should always aspire to be better.
Thank you if you read through this, I know it is text heavy. I would very much appreciate any comments, thoughts or suggestions that you may have. Also, any tips on how to make sure that the right people see this article would be really helpful!
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