So I'm gonna focus on the general policy here and not this specific case (because really, it does feel super targeted, and I think this is a legitimate issue, and I know other users have done the same thing with thread titles). My personal opinion? Threads with inflammatory titles are just disasters waiting to happen. They set a hostile tone from the start, and debate on the topic either starts hostile, or quickly turns hostile. Threads are less productive, and things just tend to go to hell.
As the primary writer for the forum etiquette guidelines, I wrote guideline 3 about thread titles to avoid situations like these (and non-specific thread titles in general). It's happened a lot over the years. It's happened in a lot CAASS. It happened a lot in the Cracked sub-forum, especially whenever a lot of people get pissed at Cracked (I think we retitled all of those). I've bitched about thread titles like these for years. The "Trump is an ASSHOLE" thread, a lot of the recent cop threads, a lot of older Cracked article threads, and most rage-bait threads we have. None of these threads set a productive tone for the conversation, and the threads almost always go to hell, and rarely have or maintain a productive discussion without moderator intervention. I don't even bother clickling threads like that unless it's for mod purposes. I would actually like to enforce those guidelines more, but I'm the only mod who wants to (I'm more heavy handed in general with modding), and I don't mod according to only how I want things done (much as I want to).
That's not to say that we won't ever enforce those, and that we won't ever retitle threads. Just that it might not be to your exact liking. If you feel a thread or post violates a rule, or even a guideline, click the report post button. This flags it for ALL the mods to look at. We might not see it otherwise, many of us -maybe all of us- don't have time to read every thread, so we don't. If you report it, we will look at it. We will evaluate it. And if we decide appropriate then we will mod it in some way.
That out of the way, my general advice for everyone is to:
1).Title threads specifically and non-inflammatory.
2). Report posts/threads that you feel violate a rule.
3). Let the mods handle it. Mini-modding just makes things worse.
SandTea wrote:How about titling news stories in casss similar to how the Cracked stories are to be titled? Directly quoting the headliner and, since there would be many different sources, a short "From X.com".
It still has the click bait and echo potential but would be quite easier for users to ignore "From X.com" if they think it is an untrustworthy or too biased site for more in depth discussion. That change might alleviate at least some titling worries.
Titling the thread same or close to the article headline is fine in theory, and probably fine in practice. Obviously, if you source from a particularly biased source, then that might not be true. I don't think adding a "from X.com" is beneficial, since it then shifts the focus too much to that one site/article, and doesn't really set the tone for further discussion, other sources, and developing information. Titles of threads do a lot to set the tone. I could also see it leading to duplicate threads for a single topic by users posting one for each source, and that's not something we want happening.
And Lind, we say CAASS with two A's, because I was the first to call it that, and goddamnit, I want two A's.
All Caps.