tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Misleading titles)

Scott Morrison comments on "Misleading titles" (3547)

Scott Morrison — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:53:50 -0800

Recall that upvotes give 10 reputation, while downvotes only take away 2. Just looking at the voting total for a question can hide a lot of reputation gain in contentious cases.

Jonas Meyer comments on "Misleading titles" (3522)

Jonas Meyer — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:03:44 -0800

Pedant, My guess is that the question that caused the commotion got a number of upvotes before it became community wiki. You can look at the edit history to see that it was not initially CW. It doesn't seem odd to me.

Added: Oh yeah, and when you're curious you can click the "Reputation" tab on a user's page. I guess the question only got 2 upvotes before being CW. But I don't care enough to investigate further.

Pedant comments on "Misleading titles" (3521)

Pedant — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:57:02 -0800

The user "Giant Laser Cannon" looks a bit odd. Discount the question mentioned in the starting post of this thread, which is community wiki. Then, this user has three upvotes on answers and three on questions, and this user accepted two answers. So this user would have a maximum of 65 reputation. My memory was that the user had more than 100 reputation. What happened?

LK comments on "Misleading titles" (3494)

LK — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:24:47 -0800

Apparently, that person just might get suspended (as happened to GLC, though perhaps there were other reasons.)

Pedant comments on "Misleading titles" (3493)

Pedant — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:17:59 -0800

Editing for mathematical content is ok. But, how about when you are a drama king/attention seeker type of person and repeatedly edits just for this purpose?

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Misleading titles" (3488)

Qiaochu Yuan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:05:46 -0800

Probably not. I think it's considered good etiquette for each edit to add something to the question - additional background, an example, a related question, that kind of thing.

Andrea comments on "Misleading titles" (3479)

Andrea — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:11:26 -0800

If what GLC was worried about is keeping his question in view, that's what repeated edits are for.

Are unnecessary repeated edits to keep a question in view considered polite?

Ilya Grigoriev comments on "Misleading titles" (3464)

Ilya Grigoriev — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:51:31 -0800

I agree with Qiaochu. But also, use your sense of humor - it's funny! I think that a policy against jokes is a bad idea. Bad jokes will naturally be forgotten.

By the way, he changed the title back. So, if you wanted down because of the title, you should probably cancel your vote.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Misleading titles" (3457)

Qiaochu Yuan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:19:58 -0800

Misleading titles should never need to be discouraged! The system already discourages them. If a title is misleading, the wrong people will read the question, so the people who might know the answer to your actual question won't read it. There is already considerable incentive in place, even without downvotes, for titles to be accurate so that the right people will read your question. If what GLC was worried about is keeping his question in view, that's what repeated edits are for.

In other words, I don't think a policy is necessary.

Harry Gindi comments on "Misleading titles" (3456)

Harry Gindi — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:43:43 -0800

I think that it's making fun of the fact that community wiki questions with no mathematical substance get more views than real mathematics questions.

Pedant comments on "Misleading titles" (3455)

Pedant — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:28:49 -0800

Sometimes people use misleading titles to attract more attention. It was just done with this question.

It has the title "Using mathematics to improve environment", and the user is "Giant Laser Cannon", previously Lasergun, even earlier Laser.

This is harmless fun from a certain viewpoint. But it is childish behavior and should be discouraged in a serious forum. There were other instances also of misleading titles(from other users). So it might be a good idea to discuss and establish a general policy.