Think about it.  No matter which show forum you're on, nearly everything you comment about is a spoiler. 

There are the spoilers for things that haven't happened/aired yet.  A lot of people try to avoid these so they'll be surprised when those things do happen.  And yes, they should have "spoiler" in the thread title.

But lately there have been a few threads that have "spoiler" in the title that don't actually have spoilers in them.  Why?  Because the thread starters are trying to be super polite, as if to say, if you haven't seen any of season 3 yet, this thread will spoil you.  But isn't that a little over the top?  Where exactly do we draw the line?

On some boards, topics about previews and promos get deleted because they are technically spoilers.  When the network advertises the upcoming episode on national tv for all the world to see, why is talking about that promo taboo?

Likewise, another incident that happened to me.  I watched a show and a few days later commented on something that happened in that episode, and I was told that it was a spoiler.  It turned into a whole debate about what a spoiler is.  For the editor of that show, talking about what happened on an episode that aired three days ago is a spoiler, because some people tivo it, and haven't watched it yet.  So my question was, how long do we have to wait to talk about it to assure that everyone has had a chance to watch it?

Some people, for example, have watched all of seasons 1 and 2, but they're waiting for season 3 to come out on dvd so they can watch it all at one time.  The season 3 finale aired in May, yet the dvd doesn't come out until September, a week before season 4 airs on television.  So do we have to wait until season 4 airs before we can discuss season 3, just in case someone missed 22 episodes?

Honestly, there are people out there that are just starting to watch a series thanks to tv dvd sets.  But exactly how polite are we supposed to be to those people?  Even those lame character elimination threads have the threat of spoilers because some characters weren't introduced until later in the series.  Simply asking who's your favorite couple could contain a threat of spoilers.  Perhaps a particular couple didn't hook up until the 117th episode.  Are we not supposed to say that's our favorite couple because someone has only watched the first 88 episodes?

I'm not wanting to be rude, and I'm not trying to be an ahole.  I know that some countries are just now finishing up their seasons, and that's understandable.  But for those of us that saw the episode three months ago...how exactly are we supposed to handle that?

As Metalhead said, when does it stop being a spoiler?