Amassment Message Board

I like to include plot/series summaries on a separate page, yes!

Todd confirms my theories that there ARE people who visit sites who are not familiar with the characters or the series. :) So I like to provide some background information for people who visit my sites, but may not know who the characters are or what series they're from. I think it can be very overwhelming to hear a lot of names and terms thrown around if you aren't too familiar with a series so I've actually taken to including glossaries and a basic character list too. I actually really enjoyed doing all of those sections, especially the character list. XD

Aku also brings up a great point about spoilers... I always make sure that if ONE section on my site is spoiler free, it's the plot summary page. I try to keep it to the general overtone of the series right at the beginning with no allusion to what happens later on, and then provide some information about the creator and the various media or air dates/publication dates.

I think it's alright to omit these sections for one-page shrines because of limited content area... but I think all sites should at least link to a wikipedia article about the series on the main page if the authors don't feel like writing something up themselves. I guess people could just google it themselves if they want to, but I think it's a far better user experience in the end to provide a link for them. :)

Like some other members, I don't particularly like writing them, but I do it anyway for the sake of completion and to introduce new people to my fandom in case they've never heard of it, but liked my site enough to check it out (that would be an honour for me!). :D I usually write them spoiler-free for that reason, although my shrines are usually filled with spoilers... but what shrines aren't? XD

I've done summaries before, but it's my least favorite part to write. It's boring because I'm basically just repeating stuff I know, trying not to mix in theories, etc. I sometimes make a list of topics that I want to talk about, but I don't think about it before I sit down to type, if I do, I'll get bored and not type it. The information is based on things I already know, so it's easy to get bored with it, I need to leave some room for new theories to come up and for me to realize things as I write about the character. I started out as a fanfic writer, rather than a written shrine maker and writing plot twists has always amused me so much more than writing information.

So yeah... short version: I've put up with writing summaries when I think it might help people better understand what I'm trying to say, but I don't like writing them.

I also find that I have trouble deciding what I should mention in the summary and what is not vital so I can skip it and still get the basic idea across without writing the whole script.