I've seen a number of questions (1,2,3,4,5) with "help!" in the title - especially on Ask Ubuntu. I don't know if it is a network wide occurrence.
Please could all questions with "help" and variants - especially when it is in the title - be blocked?
-
11The existing Problem block is stupid, harmful, and very annoying. Let's not compound the error.– TRiGJun 23, 2015 at 21:48
-
I can see your point so kind of feel bad for not agreeing with it... if you want to delete let me know and I'll remove my answer so you can do it.– Shadow Wizard Love ZeldaJun 23, 2015 at 22:33
-
4cough "probelm" cough "hlep" cough– user206222Jun 24, 2015 at 1:06
-
@ShadowWizard I've actually only lost 1 rep for it :P It's fine, there's no need to remove it - someone else will come along and ask again. :-) Thanks though.– TimJun 24, 2015 at 8:54
-
2However, in a site that deals with homework questions, like the one I'm an active user in (chem.SE), help in titles is always redundant. Even if the question is valid, with a help in its title, it suffers from a bad title. Such a feature wouldn't be bad there.– M.A.R.Jun 24, 2015 at 16:07
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Believe it or not, but the word "help" can be used as part of valid programming question title. Some examples I found by quick search:
- How does password salt help against a rainbow table attack?
- Mercurial: abort: no username supplied (see "hg help config")
- Opening Vim help in a vertical split window
And believe me, blocking "help!" will just make the user find creative ways to bypass it:
halp, heelp, help!!, haalp, hellp, ...
All in all: pointless. Let it go through and let users edit it out if bothered by it.
answered Jun 23, 2015 at 21:55
Shadow Wizard Love ZeldaShadow Wizard Love Zelda
170k31 gold badges419 silver badges832 bronze badges
-
3True, but this isn't how SO filter works: it blocks help at the beginning of the title, or if followed by with. And no, I don't believe that it produces a substantial number of halp or heelp.– user259867Jun 24, 2015 at 1:37
-
3It becomes a problem when you have 30% of the titles on your site like that. 60k questions title for little less than 200k questions. And I tell you, 99.999999999999999999% it isn't descriptive.– BraiamJun 24, 2015 at 1:51