Is it bad form to edit question titles to remove obvious tags? [duplicate]

Question

I am wondering if it it as the title suggests, it is bad form to suggest edits that remove the main tag from the title of a question. I am banned from suggesting edits, which is fine, but the accept/reject seems to have been applied somewhat inconsistently. I thought I was doing some useful curation, but it would be good to know if this is not the cas to avoid future bans. Recent examples:

Rejected

• here
• here
• here
• and here

Approved

• here
• here
• here
• and here

And this rejection by the community bot I don't understand at all.

So what is the accepted etiquette? Is it ok to remove tags in titles so long as you make some other edits to the content too? I guess the problem is that some post don't require any other editing. In my examples you can see the reject/accept has been quite inconsistently applied. I'd like to know to better avoid future bans, and to make sure I am making useful contributions to the site.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The general consensus was that a question title should not begin with a tag so I think that is what you are seeing from the community.

For example, "C# use a generic type in ToList" would be seen as being improper whereas, "Use a generic type for ToList in C#" is seen as acceptable.

I am not exactly sure why this is, perhaps because of the epic Jon Skeet's post about making solid questions here: Writing the perfect question

He has this to say about question titles

When a reader first sees your question, they're likely to be scrolling down a list of snippets. The most eye-catching part of the snippet will be the title - so use that text wisely. While you can include language or platform information, you should only do so naturally - not as a sort of "header". For example, this is bad:

Java: Why are bytes signed?

But this is okay:

Why are bytes signed in Java?

Of course, you should also include this information in tags, as it will help people who pay particular attention to specific tags.

Answer 2

The reason those edits were declined was because they were too minor, and the reject reasons even say so. If you're going to suggest an edit, make it a substantial edit.

Your question asks one thing, but the real problem you're having is something else.

To answer the question you asked, no, it's not bad form to remove tags from titles -- when those titles don't use the tags naturally.

Bad:

C# ASP.NET MVC dialog box

Good:

How do I create a dialog box in ASP.NET MVC using C#?

Answer 3

Sometimes the Suggested Edits queue can be an rocky road fraught with difficulty and review monkeys.

I am a huge advocate of removing unnecessary tags from the title - they add nothing but noise to the question title. Of course I can do this directly, if you submit a suggested edit then you at the mercy of the reviewers. Personally I would have approved three out of your four rejected edits.

As for your edit rejected by Community ♦ - once again I think this was unfortunate, and possibly based on your edit suggestion stats which show you are having approximately ¹⁄₃ of your edits rejected:

My suggestion? Make your edits a bit more substantial, I haven't looked at all your suggestions but you appear to be doing some reasonably good work. Work on building your rep, once you have 800 more you won't have to make suggestions anymore - you will be able to directly edit the post.

Answer 4

Your suggested edits were too minor. With minimal suggestions you generate more work that you do because others have to review such small suggestions. If you don't have the required reputation keep your edits to substantial changes and not minor ones. 2k+ rep users can edit without approving.

Answer 5

About the last edit rejected by the community bot:

Community rejects suggested edits when there has been a conflicting edit, or someone choose the 'improve' option, then marked the original edit as not helpful [Who runs "Community♦" on the review queue?]