Non-descriptive titles

Question

So, when this question started appearing on other stack exchange sites through the hot network question feature, I submitted an edit for review to change the title “◳◰ ◓◨ ◨◧◕ ◎◌ ◱◯◱◯ ◍◌○ ◉◉ ◇◔◓◕ ◐►◓◒ ◒◑ ◈◑ ◆◆◓ ◉◉◉” into something that actually describes the question (“Clue for Security to the Party part 12”, not saying this was a great title, but it definitely was an improvement). This edit however seems to have been rejected (wasn't notified of a rejection, however it didn't get accepted after a day~ so I think that's what must have happened). I am all for creative titles, but shouldn't titles at least hold some descriptive value?

Actually, now that I am thinking about it, it might be worth considering to raise the required standard on question titles greatly to give the site some more seriousness, but I will post that as a separate issue if this one is well received.

Answer 1

You don't get a notification of rejected edits. You need to go and check the activity tab in your profile.

Indeed, a title should be descriptive. There can't be two questions with the same title, for a reason: it should be possible to distinguish two questions based on their title. <Bunch of incomprehensible symbols> is a bad title because it's indistinguishable from <another bunch of incomprehensible symbols>.

Questions whose title don't include English words are kept out of the hot questions list, but this is only done for foreign language sites, so it doesn't apply to Puzzling. I don't think keeping this particular question out of the hot list based on its title would make much sense, though: at the scale of questions that do filter into the hot list, this title is descriptive — it clearly conveys “decipher a bunch of symbols”.

I'm afraid your proposed title “Clue for Security to the Party part 12” isn't much better. The question is self-contained, after all — the fact that it's related to “Security to the party part 12” doesn't say anything about the nature of the puzzle and isn't necessary to solve it.

Titles like “The Security to the Party [Part 34]” (and I wish I was joking, but I'm not) are a worse problem. We have about 30 questions whose title says nothing about the nature of the question. And it's getting to be a more and more widespread problem: we have ”Murder of the President - Part 5“, “Name that entity (4)”, “What Am I - Riddle Part 7”, ...

One of the reasons to have unique, descriptive titles is that they are very helpful when searching existing questions. Stack Exchange exists so that questions can be searched. We now have hundreds of indistinctive puzzles. Like hundreds of sites over the Internet.

These interchangeable “brainteaser” questions have completely overwhelmed the site, even though they're officially off-topic. They're drowning out the questions about puzzles. This site has all but become Yahoo! Puzzles.

Some aspects of Stack Exchange still work — voting serves as a poll on brainteaser answers. But Stack Exchange isn't about polls. The bad titles are one more nail in this site's coffin.

Answer 2

Yes, that was my question.

I rejected your edit because I intended the title to evoke curiosity.

That is the explanation I put in when I rejected the edit - that it would make the question worse. I went into detail.

And no, I don't think that titles of puzzles should have to hold descriptive value. Ambiguity is often part of the puzzle.

A descriptive title would have been "Cryptogram of plaintext MAGICSIBLINGS using a simplified Pollux cipher". But then there's no puzzle to solve so what's the point?

Your proposed title was something like "Clue for ... [other puzzle]", which, while it's true, doesn't describe the content of the cryptogram puzzle at all - it doesn't mention the type of the puzzle, or the plaintext or the ciphertext or the cipher. Which are all there is to describe.

If my questions doesn't have enough 'seriousness' for you then I suggest you don't visit them. In that respect, a title without much 'seriousness' could be useful in that it could alert you to a question which you're likely to dislike.