Should this be a clickbait site, or should we stand by SE standards of question quality?

Question

[Edit: Richard is stepping down. This was NOT the desired outcome, here. At most, I hoped for clarified policies: a learning opportunity, not a blame-and-punishment game. I really hope this question was not a major part of the decision. If it was... I feel unable to ever question mod actions if the reaction against the mod is so heavy.]

Background:

Were the Moon landings faked in Interstellar? has been edited by Moderator @Richard, from "Is there proof that the United States land landed on the moon in Interstellar?" to "were the moon landings faked?"

Richard knew that this would be contentious and misleading, commenting

"I've changed the title. You'll get more upvotes, but with such a provocative header you'll also attract some crazies. Flag anything that looks amiss :-)"

adding

"Per my message above, if you wish to discuss the title, please do so in chat. Further attempts to edit tags into the title will be frowned upon."

Since the only tag on the question was "Interstellar" this second comment was a clear threat of Moderator action to anyone editing the title to mention the word "Interstellar".

After the question hit the HNQ list, the question's OP, @PremierBromanov went to chat (http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/24365359#24365359), agreed that the mod-edited title is "misleading", but claimed it "an attention grabber, but in a good way", "good for attracting attention to our SE".

Can we have a definitive, clear ruling? Is it:

1. Deliberately misleading clickbait for upvotes is OK and encouraged on this SE. The mods commit to defending these;

2. The above is true, but it's only for the mods to make "lulz"y edits to questions: regular users will still get in trouble if exploiting the system;

3. Something else? (what?)

[Edit, because I feel it's not very obvious from my probably-overly-provocative phrasing above: I absolutely believe that there was not one iota of malice or ill-intent in Richard's modding there, and that he acted with the interests of the SE in mind. I'm very confident that I'd make many far worse calls in his place.]

Answer 1

Every community in the Stack Exchange network has a single objective: create the world's highest quality, most complete archive of information in whatever topic the site is about. The quality and integrity of the information compiled by this community is the reason this site is here.

Titles should be optimized for clarity, ease of understanding and accuracy. Not for catching eyeballs.

There are lots of places on the 'net where you can go to practice getting the maximum response possible from passersby, but that's not what Stack Exchange sites are for. They're for building a body of specialized, expert knowledge. This is consistent whether we're talking about SciFi & Fantasy SE, or Physics SE, or Stack Overflow.

Ultimately, as much as our unofficial motto is "We hate fun", we are one of the minority of SE sites that is purely recreational...we don't solve pressing, real-life problems. With that in mind, I don't think a little silliness is a bad thing at all.

This is true. Except fun isn't the goal unto itself here. It's a happy byproduct, and shouldn't be sought at the expense of the site's primary purpose.

Answer 2

Personally, I reckon:

• This is SE, not a clickbait site like Buzzfeed.
• Titles should be as clear and searchable as possible.
• Clickworthiness is no valid criterion for question quality.
• There's no rule against tag info in titles.
• There's no such thing as "misleading in a good way". Misleading is bad, always.
• The amended title is deliberately, consciously bad.
• Bad titles cause off-topic arguments, comment deletions, reversions, and upset users.
• Bad titles should be fixable without fear or threats of admin retribution.
• When a clickbait title gets to the HNQ list, it makes this look like the /b/ of SE.
• Clickbait cheapens upvotes, and cheats those who post proper content.
• The amended title has twice been good-faith fixed by editors of far higher rep than I: @Gilles and @lightness-races-in-orbit - would likely have been more, but Richard put the threat in.

I do not feel that either option 1 or option 2 good options, as I do not feel that Mod-defended clickbait titles are good options.

The only good option 3 I can think of is a promise not to do it again, and a removal of mod-protection and threats from the bad question title.

[Edit: Interesting! I see comments questioning whether what appears to me to be an obvious threat, actually was not a threat.

Could this be a regional thing? Because it was that threat -- a mod menacing the community against changes to his pet edit -- that really raised my hackles. Without it, I'd just have shrugged and moved on.

The phrase "will be reverted" would not have been as menacing a threat, and would be essentially the same as locking the topic. But the vague and unrestricted "will be frowned upon", from a mod, IS a clear threat of moderator action above and beyond mere reverting. Not sure how this is even questioned.

If my boss said "any employee doing X will be frowned on", I don't think anyone would reasonably claim that meant that if I do X, I will merely be scowled at as the boss undoes X.

This might be a regional thing, though? **/edit]

[Edit2**: this seemed an interesting enough possibility that I took it off to it's own question on English Stack Exchange

I've noticed in discussions about authority statements that in-group people are often blind to official-voice and threats aimed at out-groupers, because they can't feel the chilling effect. /edit]

Answer 3

Disclaimer: I'm far from a regular visitor here.

I saw this question in the HNQ, and my interest was piqued, so I clicked on it. I imagined a Skeptics-style question, but in different context, but not so narrow as just Interstellar. On second thought, perhaps what I imagined as being asked would be more suited to World Building.

And then I saw it was about Interstellar. I felt deceived. I did go on to read the post and answers, but that title had annoyed me sufficiently that I didn't spend time voting. Yeah, not a big loss, given that I have made only 14 votes in total here.

It is acceptable that titles mean different things in the context of different sites. But this title was committing a lie of omission. Even knowing that the question is on Science Fiction and Fantasy does nothing to show that this question is about Interstellar specifically. Had it mentioned "in Interstellar" in the title as it does now, I would have remembered Cooper's dialogue with the teacher, and shrugged it off as yet another easy question going hot.

This title was clickbait. I don't need clickbait to visit this site. It's better than that.

Answer 4

From what I can see, you really have two separate concerns:

• Should question titles be "clickbait-y", with an eye towards improving view/vote count?
• Richard's conduct

I have thoughts on each of these, but I'll handle them separately.

Clickbait titles

I don't see a problem with this; askers are welcome to choose whatever title they want (within reason). If an asker wants their question title to be in some way light-hearted, that's their prerogative and I see no reason to prevent them.

Likewise, I don't see a problem with users editing question titles to make them humorous. One of the few general pieces of guidance on the "edit" privilege is to improve the post. If the OP disagrees with the new title, they are welcome to revert it or make further changes; although strictly speaking all content on the SE network belongs to the community, we do generally respect the sovereignty of post ownership, unless there's a compelling reason not to. I don't think a funny question title is worth arguing over.

Another issue to consider is how we would police this. What is the standard for "too clickbaity"? Quickly skimming the list of top-voted questions, I can see a bunch that might be considered clickbait:

• Beofett's Whose underwear is this?, which was asking to identify a DC superhero's logo from a pack of kid's underwear
• Ryan's Are all Stormtroopers as poor soldiers as the ones in the movies?, asking about why Stormtrooper's can't shoot straight
• Praxis' Why are there so many 47s?¹, asking about the prevalence of the number "47" in Star Trek
• Praxis' (again) When and why did the Enterprise get balls?, asking about nacelle design on the Enterprise
• Peter Casetta's Was Yoda fully sane on Dagobah?, which is exactly what it says on the tin
• Wikis' Was the Millennium Falcon too slow?, asking about George Lucas' dodgy physics
• WhatRoughBeasts' Hogwarts: So why aren't the kids "doing it"?, also what it says on the tin
• Beofett's What is the origin of the "Riker Chair Maneuver"?, asking about the ongoing war between chairs and Jonathon Frakes' spine

And on and on and on.

Every single one of those question titles accurately describes the question. So which ones are too "clickbaity"? Why? What would you change them to?

There's no reason we couldn't do implement a policy like this, but I don't think the administrative overhead is worth whatever questionable benefit would come out of it.

Ultimately, as much as our unofficial motto is "We hate fun", we are one of the minority of SE sites that is purely recreational; with a few exceptions, we don't solve pressing, real-life problems. With that in mind, I don't think a little silliness is a bad thing at all.

Richard

I'm not going to say I've always agreed with Richard's moderation decisions, and I think this is one of those times things could have been handled more tactfully, but on the balance I don't think his actions were that bad.

As I said above, one of the few pieces of guidance we're given on what constitutes an "appropriate edit" is that we improve the post in some way. Richard's comment (quoted in part below) would suggest that he believes this was an improvement:

You'll get more upvotes, but with such a provocative header you'll also attract some crazies.

It's worth noting that none of the further edits to the title substantially changed it. The only change that was made, by both two subsequent users, was to clarify in the title that the question was about the movie Interstellar.

Personally I'm not a fan of edit wars; I find them unproductive. If I make an edit and somebody else undoes it, I prefer to let it lie in most cases. But in this case, I don't have much of a problem with the edit. Although tags in titles isn't something we have a hard-and-fast rule about, personally I'm opposed to it. It seems silly to include that information in the title when, in many situations it will be put there anyway.

The main exception to that rule is the HNQ list, which puts question titles beside site logos, devoid of other context. That's a problem, but I don't think we should be basing policies around one feature of the network.

---

¹ Disclaimer: I have the top-voted (and only) answer on this question

Answer 5

(I feel like my answer is more like a long comment, but I wasn't sure which of the other answers it would fit on.)

I think "Were the moon landings faked?" is misleading and it would be better if the title made it clear the question is talking about moon landings as depicted in a movie.

It's misleading because moon landings really happened (or were really faked...), so when you see just the title it's not clear the question is about a work of fiction.

There's a comparison in a comment to a question about dragons where the title doesn't specify which work of fiction it's about, but in that case it's clear that it's about some work of fiction.

Also, since discussion of real-world explanations for things that happen in an SF&F world are off-topic, I think a title that looks like it's asking about a real-world event is undesirable.

Answer 6

I think this question is kinda loaded, since I don't consider the title to be click-bait and only "misleading" as a sunday newspaper comic joke. That is to say, it's a slight misdirection, in that your first reaction to such a statement is to say "WELL OF COURSE WE LANDED ON THE MOON". This title plays on reactions, but isn't lying to anyone. The context is available to anyone that takes a single second to find out which stack exchange the question is on (Sci-fi) and what the question is about (Interstellar).

Can the title utilize "in Interstellar"? Sure. Does it need to? I don't think it needs to.

To me, this is less about titles and more about the fact that Richard edited my title to something more compelling, but also more concise. Something a lot of people saw as "clickbait". I think Richard knew this would happen, and so tried to nip the edit war in the bud. As the OP, I appreciate this. I don't like edit wars on my stuff. No one does. Since the sovereignty of ownership is generally respected, had I actually been online I don't think much of this discussion would have happened. In fact, when Richard edited it I saw the edit and had the opportunity to revert it, but I didn't. So really, all that's left here is to question Richard's mod decisions, not the title editing. And I think, again, that he forsaw the edit war and nipped it in the bud.

Regarding your actual question: 3)

There's an element of personal creativity that is and should be allowed on every stack exchange, especially one about fiction. Users are free to use whatever words they like, so long as the question's content is clear and it follows other guidelines. Users are human beings, after all, and constructing your title is as important here as it is with any story, article, document, movie, etc etc. There's nothing wrong with attention grabbing titles so long as it isn't lying and it is accurate to the question. It's actually a great strategy to make your question stand out, especially if you believe it's a good one.

Answer 7

I think there are quite a few misconceptions around your question, so lets get to them:

1. Your assertion that the title it "clickbait" is misleading. The generally accepted meaning of "clickbait" is a title that is designed to attract attention to a post at the expense of quality or accuracy. There was nothing inaccurate or low-quality about the post in question.
2. The original title of the post did not mention Interstellar at all. The OP only added that in after prompting from well-meaning but, IMO, misguided commenters that he should. All @Richard did was revert the title to something much close to the OP's original goal.
3. The OP's opinion was more than just "provocative == good". He specifically agreed with the assertion (which I also made) that this is a science fiction site. Any question asked here is implicitly about a fictional universe and should be read in that context.
4. There's nothing against the rules about catchy or provocative titles, and certainly no rule that we need to go around fixing them.
5. There is, however, a general policy that you don't try to force tag names into question titles just to "clarify" them. If the title is unreadable without the tag name, that's fine, but making an edit to a perfectly legitimate title just to add tag names is not something I agree with.
6. Richard's threat was not merely "don't do this thing I disagree with." His threat was "this question is in dispute, stop editing it until we get the matter resolved".

Having cleared some of that up, are there really any issues here? There's a few things to look at:

Provocative Titles

IMO there's nothing at all wrong with provocative titles. If there is, someone should probably tell Arqade about it. They've got a long history of clever or unusual titles that make no sense out of context.

The cruz of the issue here, of course, is the Hot Network Questions list. That is the one place were titles appear almost entirely devoid of context (on Google, the tags are auto-inserted into search results, for example). And IMO, that's a flaw in the HNQ's that we shouldn't start making policy to fix.

Even without any other context, the site's logo is right there: it's a SciFi question, of course it's going to be about some science fiction book/movie/TV show.

The goal of writing good question titles is to attract attention. Once you have that attention, the goal of writing good question bodies is to keep that attention. As long as your title is not misleading* or offensive, I see no reason why it can't be amusing, intriguing, provocative, or whatever other technique you feel like using to get attention.

Richard's Actions

Had Richard merely asserted, by fiat, that he was right and you were wrong, apart from being business as usual for us, it would have probably been inappropriate. However, that was not the sequence of events.

The question was edited by a user to add the tag Interstellar into the title, because that user found the title "nonsense sensational attention-seeking". Aside from the personal judgement over whether this was an accurate assessment or not, there was a genuine dispute over whether this change "improved the question" or not. As such, the edit was rolled back. Another user came along later and made the same edit again.

At this point, the question was in danger of starting an edit war, so @Richard did the correct thing: reverted the last, controversial edit, opened a discussion on the topic, and pointed people to it. He also made clear that any attempts to edit the question in the meantime would be considered vandalism.

As far as I know, that's entirely appropriate action to be taken in case of an edit war. The only way the behavior could have gone badly, if is the decision had gone the other way and he had refuse to allow it. That's not what happened, though, so I see no evidence of abusive moderator behavior.

Answer 8

Clickbait is a lot like jalapeños. It's good in controlled amounts.

Downvote me all you like - serial downvotes will be reversed. I like a healthy amount of clickbait in my *.SE diet. I love a good laugh. If a title writer is clever enough to come up with a good clickbait title, he deseves my upvote. It just shouldn't become everything.