The Hobbit-- Spoilers??

Thanks to children_of_lir for the link to this very interesting thread. It raises some very interesting questions.

http://fanficrants.livejournal.com/11256436.html

For example, can you spoil a seventy-five year old story?

Whose responsibility is it for spoilers--the person who's posting fic, or the person who wants to avoid the spoilers?

And the one that puzzles me most: Were the children of 1937 really more intelligent than the children of the present day?

(BTW, and totally OT: I DO NOT LIKE THE NEW POSTING PAGE!)