Question Naming Issues

Question

For the first time in a while I opened the GD newsletter email and was dismayed to find that the second "Top New Question" this week is need help with logo.

It's 7 days old and was last edited 6 days ago. There are bad titles that we can cope with, then there are unacceptable titles. This falls into the latter category in my opinion.

Initially, I regarded it as one that slipped through the net, however on the same day I see a Hot Network Question titled Help me to find this font. Again already edited.

I'm not blaming anyone, I know how hard it is to come up with titles, however it is worth a try to make any improvement in these cases.

I'm raising the issue because it indicates a worrying trend. If no one can be bothered to improve bad titles, it will soon decay into a messy pile of almost duplicates, and as I've said in the past, bad content begets bad content, new users are going to follow these examples if they're left unchecked.

These kinds of basic questions with terrible titles should be put on hold and/or edited before they're allowed to remain on the site in my opinion, does the community agree?

Answer 1

I generally very much agree with you...

That title was pretty atrocious (I've edited it now). The question was tweeted with that title too:

...which, well, doesn't look to great.

The HNQ font-id question isn't as bad, it's still not good though. I saw that and genuinely struggled to come up with anything better... so I gave up.

I do try and and edit poorly worded questions as much as I can, but generally if I'm struggling to make it better or havn't got time etc. I'll just leave it. Maybe that isn't the best idea...

With regards to closing; it's not going to happen. It sometimes takes days to close off-topic question, and poorly worded questions are definitely less of a priority. Think of that what you will, but that's how it is.

So a suggestion (to myself as much as everyone else); if you see a poorly written question and you can't improve it yourself; bring it up somewhere. Maybe drop a link in chat, maybe leave a comment somewhere, maybe post here; the import thing is bring it to someone's attention. It needs to be edited. Sooner rather than later.

Answer 2

While you may or may not have intended to target me out since I am the one that edited both questions it was due to their tags after glancing over the question's content. Any SE user is allowed to make an edit and if their rep is low enough it will go in the review Que.

That said I would like to counter your question and ask why not just go ahead and edit the question titles yourself? The length in which to create said question in meta you could have easily created new question titles.

It's not the role of any moderators on any SE site to curate the content. Furthermore, creating titles isn't my strong suite nor will I try to make it that. I did what I can do best and that is tag editing. If a question is lacking a tag or has less than three tags I will surely try to tag it for better visibility.

As you indicated in the comment, if you feel the question should be closed you have enough rep to do so. I will no longer nor do I think other moderators feel we should be solely the ones closing questions. I will only close a question if I think it's way out of scope or when I read a question and I can think of multiple variations to answer the question.