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I'm pretty new to Puzzling, but I've looked over a few meta posts about "difficulty". We don't have tags for difficulty ratings, and we don't seem to need a star/rating system IMO.

Yet people label their puzzles regardless:

I think this has all the problems Doorknob mentioned in his answer, with the addition of cluttering up the titles on the front page. Square brackets are particularly bad to me, since that's how [closed], [on hold], and [duplicate] show up. Having excessive brackets makes it more difficult to skim/scan.

I'd like to edit them all out (and continue to do this as I see them), but would like to hear the community's opinion first (since like I said, new here).

To be clear, I don't care if the poster says whether they believe it's hard or not if it's worked into the body. However, the title shouldn't have this meta information.

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    $\begingroup$ Whatever is decided please be careful with certain titles which are actually part of the riddle. e.g. puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/4281/… $\endgroup$
    – d'alar'cop
    Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 22:17
  • $\begingroup$ @d'alar'cop See meta.puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/1438/titling-overhaul $\endgroup$
    – yuritsuki
    Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 23:14
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    $\begingroup$ Difficulty is subjective. It should not be in the title. Something I find hard, may be trivial to others. $\endgroup$
    – Coreus
    Commented Nov 17, 2014 at 10:21
  • $\begingroup$ I believe PPCG (codegolf) has at least one 'advanced' tag. It's quite useful in fact. There are quite different sorts of people who might want to answer questions. $\endgroup$
    – Simd
    Commented Nov 29, 2014 at 9:00
  • $\begingroup$ @Lembik Can you be more specific? I can't find a tag like that there, so I'm unsure what you mean. Regardless, that's only half relevant, since this question is about titles. $\endgroup$
    – Set Big O
    Commented Dec 1, 2014 at 14:57
  • $\begingroup$ @Geobits It turns out that tag doesn't exist anymore at PPCG. My mistake. And yes, I am not in favour of adding it to the title. I do think that relevant tags really help though. $\endgroup$
    – Simd
    Commented Dec 1, 2014 at 14:59

2 Answers 2

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Just remove them all together. As it stands, those words are just filler text, designed to gain attention but not really useful in any way.

That's my current belief; a title should describe maybe a glimpse of the riddle, but it should not add anything else superficial to it.

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    $\begingroup$ One of my questions is quoted above. I used the term "an easy one" because it was an easy question, not just "to gain attention". I find your accusation rude. $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:20
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    $\begingroup$ An easy question to WHOM? You clearly havent addressed that. Obviously it's considered easy by you, but what's to say that's considered easy for others? Have you already judging everyone on this site, and already determined other users will find it "easy"? $\endgroup$
    – yuritsuki
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:24
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    $\begingroup$ In my own opinion. Which I'll grant is subjective, but not worthless. You haven't addressed the question of your rudeness. $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:25
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    $\begingroup$ @AE Good questions should be objective, not subjective. Or you can see blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective $\endgroup$
    – yuritsuki
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:25
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the title shouldn't have this meta information.

Why not? The 'hard to skim' / 'clutter' argument doesn't seem like a strong one to me. It's (potentially) useful information.

If its not in the title then where should it be? Tags would be usable.

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    $\begingroup$ These words are just filler text. We don't need filler text in titles, we want descriptive titles that describe the puzzle descriptively. $\endgroup$
    – yuritsuki
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:17
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    $\begingroup$ @thinlyveiledquestionmark, do you really find those words totally meaningless? Even if you do, since you never answer any questions on the main site anyway, how does that affect you in any way at all? $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:18
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    $\begingroup$ yes, they are. Take a look at SE network questons, and tell me if you see any question titles with "Very hard", "challenging", "Very Easy" in the titles. The answer? Extremely little to none. Adding in artificial difficulty levels is a completely dumb idea; it is subjective, and not objective, one puzzle can be easy for some, while it might pose a challenge for others. So to add a "difficulty" level is already extremely superficial. $\endgroup$
    – yuritsuki
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:19
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    $\begingroup$ I agree that it's subjective; that doesn't make it worthless. I don't really care if puzzling.SE titles don't entirely conform to SE norms. And you haven't answered the second part of my question: since you never answer any questions on puzzling.SE anyway, how are you disadvantaged by these titles? $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 16:22
  • $\begingroup$ If you don't care, then all I have to say is this: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/243705/… $\endgroup$
    – yuritsuki
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 19:56
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    $\begingroup$ No - I didn't say that I didn't care about quality. Straw man argument. I said "I don't really care if puzzling.SE titles don't entirely conform to SE norms". Since you have no interest in positive participation in this community, why do you come here and continually criticise it? Seems like trolling to me. $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 20:12
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    $\begingroup$ @thinlyveiledquestionmark - you clearly don't understand how SE works. There are some (a small number) of rules that apply uniformly to all SE sites, but most policies are adaptable to individual sites. If puzzling finds that quantifying the difficulty of a puzzle is beneficial, then it isn't against any SE standards for them to do so. I don't personally have a horse in the game of if it is useful or not, but saying "nobody else does it so it's wrong" is flat out incorrect logic and not constructive. $\endgroup$
    – AJ Henderson
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 20:35
  • $\begingroup$ @thinlyveiledquestionmark: no. Look closely at the word 'titles'. My remark was about titles. $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 20:40

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