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Could we please lift this restriction from edits by users with a significant amount of reputation?

Ref: What triggers my title rejection?

In other words, I am proposing a new privilege "use prohibited words in title when editing (low-rep?) posts".

I have repeatedly given up on editing low-quality but salvageable posts with titles like "newbie need help with simple program" because no title that I could extract from the post was acceptable to the system. In this situation, it would clearly be better to put something actually actionable like "weird output from printf" but ... I can't. (And the fact that the useless title was not rejected feels slightly offensive.)

I have 140k reputation on Stack Overflow; I'm thinking 100k would be much too high a threshold for the proposed privilege, but don't have a good intuition for when exactly this should be awarded. 1

Obviously the privilege should not extend to users editing their own posts.

1 Generally 20k already feels too crowded and the lower rep levels might be too low. I vaguely recall that reaching 50k was disappointing because it didn't bring any new privileges.

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  • 21
    Honestly, it feels more like it's something that should be applied with the edits to any question or answer are applied immediately privilege.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:01
  • 11
    Seems reasonable that at 50K users are able to use titles just as "Help! Check problem in code below" instead of having to use "Halp See pr0blem in cod3". We all need to have goals :P
    – Scratte
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:01
  • Also, a bit of a nit pick but I wouldn't say that useless title being accepted is "offensive", but it's certainly not intuitive and is frustrating.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:02
  • 8
    I really do feel insulted when a very simple regex overrides my human judgment as a trusted user.
    – tripleee
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:14
  • 16
    I'm not sure this is a good idea, since low-rep users might want to emulate titles chosen by more experienced users and successful posts, and get frustrated when they're prohibited to do so. Seems like an X-Y problem, the actual problem is stop rejecting valid titles, and the actual solution is to either remove the filter or rework it to something that actually works. You editing the title to something sensible, then the low-rep user being unable to make minor adjustments because it triggers the filter seems especially poor UX.
    – Erik A
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:15
  • 7
    This would make it difficult for users under that threshold to edit the question themselves. While it might be possible to only check for cases where the title was also edited, what if the title needs to be edited? Then it'd have to be edited to exclude the prohibited words.
    – Catija
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:18
  • 1
    @Catija Good points, but I'm thinking it would actually vaguely be a feature to move that friction back onto the original author instead of slowing down those who try to improve the quality.
    – tripleee
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:21
  • 3
    I feel the same way. It would be helpful to get a message when I hit the "Edit" button that the title is unacceptable, instead of getting the message when I hit the "Save Edits" button (after I've spent a few minutes on edits). I wonder if this only happens on old questions (asked before filters were in place).
    – toolic
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:34
  • 1
    I think one issue is that common (bad) titles like "need help" or "null pointer exception" etc will have numerous duplicate titles named the same way.
    – Lundin
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:39
  • 3
    Eh, I kinda like this. There has been terribad titles that were fixed because of this. If you are editing the question, you may as well fix every issue with the post.
    – Braiam
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 12:50
  • 12
    I agree that it's frustrating. However, if you really can't come up with a useful title for the question then there's a high probability that the question is of very low quality, and it needs closing and deleting. Of course, the question's quality might be acceptable, but it's a dupe, and all of the possible relevant titles are already in use. We probably don't need another dupe to act as a signpost if we can't find a good unique title for it.
    – PM 2Ring
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 13:16
  • 2
    Add it here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252690/…
    – Kevin B
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 14:46
  • 1
    @KevinB Done.
    – tripleee
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 15:51
  • 2
    @Braiam Actually I'm never sure where to draw the line between a discussion about an idea and an actual feature-request.
    – tripleee
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 15:53
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    This filter is incredibly annoying. At least very least fix it so that if I'm editing the body of a question to improve something, don't mandate that I change the title if I didn't touch the title. The error message is also incredibly crap. I've sat literally 10 minutes before trying to work out specifically what was wrong with a title. In the end I had to see the regex they use posted somewhere on Meta to figure out what the mystery criteria are.
    – Michael
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:53

1 Answer 1

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I don't think this is a good idea.

The filter applies to everyone at the moment. This means that you can't ask a question with a poor title... Ok, you can ask but it's much more difficult. Questions, where we have this problem, are usually old question dating title pre-filter. When this message stops us from editing, it should make us consider whether the question will benefit from the edit and implicit bump, or should just be closed and/or deleted. No point in changing something in the question body if the whole question isn't worth anything. Or maybe, you should provide a better title if the question is good enough.

On the other hand, if I edit a new question and I want to change the title, I need to see this validation error message too. It should prevent me from making a worse title than it already is. Sure, the filter is not perfect, but it's also very easy to work around. Just think of a better title.

Making an exception for high-rep users will just allow us to make worse titles. The filter isn't perfect but it does help. Let's keep it.

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    So what is the point of high rep trust, then? If we can't trust someone with 30K rep not to put in a terrible title, then the whole house of cards around how we do content moderation falls apart here.
    – Makoto
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:31
  • 1
    @Makoto Many high-rep users never asked a question or do it very infrequently. It's not about trust in the sense that they can do it on purpose, but rather that they don't have the experience to write good titles
    – Dharman Mod
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:32
  • 2
    And yet, the only thing we have to distinguish users from the ones who may only seek to troll or deface content is that reputation. Yes, there are a lot of users who don't ask questions and happen to have a lot of reputation, but those are rare. If nothing else, someone could always raise an issue here on Meta about it and get a better balance from the community at large if it's necessary.
    – Makoto
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:34
  • @Makoto What good titles are disallowed by this filter? Can you/anyone name examples where they personally wanted to put a title that didn't meet the criteria?
    – MegaIng
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:34
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    @MegaIng: Algorithmic problems similar to "Three egg problem" would be one, or sometimes when you actually do need to express that you have a problem, not a porblem or pr0blm or something to that effect. Y'know, anything to make the content...more searchable? Also too there are some edits that I've done in the past for older questions which caused the filter to trip for reasons still yet unknown to me that are more paper cuts than aids.
    – Makoto
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:35
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    What if I am editing the post's body only, and I am not focusing on the title? Why should I be prompted to make a better title when there's a chance that 1. I can't, or 2. I don't have to because I'm only editing the body?
    – 10 Rep
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 16:52
  • @10Rep Because the system is telling you the title needs to be edited. Don't ignore the title if it needs improvement
    – Dharman Mod
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 17:08
  • 2
    @Dharman I agree, but it's a little like skipping a post in review. I don't feel like editing the post's title, because I don't know what the title should be. So then why should I edit the title?
    – 10 Rep
    Commented Jun 16, 2021 at 17:10

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