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Why do I have to put at least x number of characters in the title?

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    What title were you going to post?
    – user27414
    Mar 25, 2010 at 17:06
  • On SO I tried to post title "Can I peek" with java tags. Then I got message (Ooops...etc). So I've changed my title to "Can I peek------------title was to short. Unbelievable". This was accepted. Where is the point of such unnatural constrain? Second point I wan't to make is that of course my title was edited and this consumed someone other's time. Sometimes short title is correct. Mar 25, 2010 at 17:13
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    In this case it wasn't, and somebody edited your question title to be more useful.
    – MartW
    Mar 25, 2010 at 17:17
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    "Can I peek" is not very descriptive (even with the tags). A few more words describing what you need will entice more people to read (and answer) your question.
    – user27414
    Mar 25, 2010 at 17:20
  • @Jon B but sometimes when title is intriguing it's even more interesting and more people will try to check what's this about. Having said that I'm not going to bring anymore issues with the way formatting/editting works on SO because there is little point in doing so. Nothing will get changed even if the way it is now is clearly far from ideal. Just like this bloody double space to mark new line. Ridiculous. And so unnatural and unintuitive. Mar 25, 2010 at 19:08

4 Answers 4

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Because as x approaches 0, so too does our understanding of and interest in your problem. ;)

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You might have noticed that you are asked to "be descriptive" when writing the title. The purpose of that is to have high chances to find a certain question using relevant keywords. Since the title always has a high rank in any kind of search (site-internal, google, or other), it should be a good (even if concise) description of the question.

This kind of descriptiveness is (supposed to be) encouraged by the minimum character count.

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The title is important because it is the primary piece of information people (are supposed to) search for before they post a duplicate question

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  • 99% first posts and then if they get link from someone indicating that similiar post already exists are checking beforementioned post. That's the reality. That's human behaviour. Mar 25, 2010 at 19:11

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