10
$\begingroup$

Meaningful titles are one of the pillars of a good question and answer site. In a concise fashion they introduce or even summarise what will be asked about. I personally think that these question titles ideally are also questions themselves. In conjunction with good tags (What do I need to know about tagging? Yes, I know, that could use an update, too.) everyone should be able to quickly identify questions that appeal to them.
Unfortunately, not all users will spend time on the titles. In the past there have been various efforts to get rid of meaningless titles, but it is always only a matter of time when form a new pile. This has various reasons, but for the time being, these reasons are not important, just that they are here and cluttering our site is. There are a couple of buzzwords which will almost always indicate that a title is rather meaningless. The following table summarises these words and their respective count at the moment. Please not, that questions with more than one buzzword will be counted in each category. They do exist: I need some help on this Chemistry question can any one help please!! I need to find the cost of a single atom of aluminum.

Buzzword Count Search Link Meta-Reference
question 170 title:question I question the use of "question" in question titles
help 120 title:help Help make help questions have more helpful titles
Problem 125 title:problem Houston, we have a "Problem" in question titles
experiment 137 title:experiment Buzzwords in question titles - season 4 & 5 - experiments and exercises
exercise 3 title:exercise dito
chemistry 459 title:chemistry I am asking about chemistry, you know, that's why I put it in the title
chemical 962 title:chemical* dito
doubt 14 title:doubt I have a doubt about "doubt" in doubt titles
confusion 120 title:confusion Are you confused by confusing question titles including the word "Confusion"?
calculat* some see → I can hardly calculate how often 'calculation' is used as an uncalculated risk of having a meaningless question title ♥

Since the spring cleaning chat room has been quite active recently I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention. While you're in the wild editing away to obtain your badges and help improve our content, please keep an eye out on these regular offenders.

If you want to read more see also this meta-post: Improper question titles/questions

And while you're already reading, please consider removing unnecessary “statements of weakness” or buzzwords inside the questions' bodies, too.

One obligatory disclaimer quote from season one courtesy of our at-that-time fearless leader jonsca:

This is no emergency, but it would be nice to have descriptive, googleable titles for these so that people can find them in the future.

You can also use a SEDE query to look for all of them together: Questions possibly with Chem.SE buzzwords in the title.

♥ There are plenty of legitimate uses of these, so that maybe is not such a goo example, because it is hard to separate out the offenders.

$\endgroup$
9
  • 7
    $\begingroup$ Honorable mention: The generic “What is the name of this compound?” title. $\endgroup$
    – Loong
    Commented May 24, 2021 at 19:33
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Wait, i already have copy editor, marshal and electorate. this came too late :P. On a more serious note, do you want to actively change titles like we remove the homework tag or is this a more passive thing? $\endgroup$
    – Safdar Faisal
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 8:28
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ I just actively edited posts with "Doubt" in the title. Seems like I reached my maximum edit suggestions limit. Time to cool down! (´△｀) $\endgroup$
    – Nisarg Bhavsar
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 13:23
  • $\begingroup$ @SafdarFaisal For the time being, keep an eye open on these and if you happen to come across a title like those, edit it. You can use the links to find them if you're bored. I personally recommend focussing on the positive, open questions. There is also the option of the spring cleaning chat room. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Commented May 26, 2021 at 22:12
  • $\begingroup$ I wouldn't call them buzzwords ("A word drawn from technical jargon, that has gotten abused by people that want to appear impressive but don't truly understand the subject."). Most of them are part of meta talk (e.g., talking about the process of asking a question). Perhaps fluff words? $\endgroup$
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Jun 4, 2021 at 13:57
  • $\begingroup$ @peter You're about five years too late; the word and tag have established their meaning. While I'm thankful for the English lesson, I'll not be changing it here. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Commented Jun 4, 2021 at 20:28
  • $\begingroup$ @PeterMortensen I've had a look at alternative definitions of buzzwords; I think we're using it correctly. I have also removed your comment about doubt; it's been covered here plenty of times and is only noise at this point. Anyways, this is moving into off topic territory, so chat would be a more appropriate place to discuss this. $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Commented Jun 5, 2021 at 19:12
  • $\begingroup$ @NisargBhavsar I did not intend this post to be updated. Is a snapshot. Many of the numbers will change in a daily basis. While I appreciate the intention, is probably better spent on something else. ;) $\endgroup$
    – Martin - マーチン Mod
    Commented Jun 27, 2021 at 15:40
  • $\begingroup$ Ok @Martin-マーチン, thanks for the heads up! $\endgroup$
    – Nisarg Bhavsar
    Commented Jun 27, 2021 at 18:15

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .