What should we do about question titles containing vulgar words?

Question

After "What is the difference between 'tits' and 'boobs'?" being censored, it's the turn of "What does 'suck it up ho' means?" to be sanitized. I think we need to come to a consensus.

So, what should we do?

Answer 1

We shouldn't censor a question's title.

Ideally, all StackExchange questions should have a concise and informative title. Obviously, it shouldn't be unnecessarily wordy but one should have a good idea of what the question is from the title alone. The new sanitized titles fail in that regard.

Making a question's title less informative doesn't seem like it's in congruence with StackExchange's goal of creating The Wikipedia of Long Tail English Language Questions.

In fact, if our role model is Wikipedia, then we should proudly oppose such censorship.

Wikipedia contains images which many find objectionable. When the founder of Wikipedia tried to censor some images after criticism by Larry Sanger, the community of Wikipedia reacted strongly and which then caused Jimmy Wales to renounce many of the permissions granted by his founder status as a response:

Mr Wales has faced criticism from the band of volunteers who help to maintain the site, some of whom argued that the decision to delete was undemocratic and taken too quickly. They also expressed concerns that valid material might be deleted accidentally.

On Sunday, in response, Jimmy Wales voluntarily revoked many of the "permissions" given to him as Wikipedia's founder, to delete and edit "protected" content on Wikimedia Commons.

In a message to the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list he said this was "in the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I acted".

I understand why some might not uncomfortable by some words or expression but, if that's the issue, we can simply enforce the use of the vulgar tag.

Users who take issue with the language found in those question's title can simply add the tag to their ignored tags.

Answer 2

I think censoring a question's title, when done in a careful way, is the best compromise between allowing taboo topics to be discussed (which I firmly support) and keeping the casual user from equating this site with Urban Dictionary.

Having a vulgar tag is not a sufficient solution. Casual readers probably do not have tags hidden on the site. And the "tits" and "boobs" question made it onto the MultiCollider, which means all sorts of casual people run across it. I think taboo topics are more likely to get pushed up like this because they usually generate some amount of controversy.

Having a vulgar tag with added functionality that keeps the question out of places like the MultiCollider or the front page is another possibility, but I don't think it is a good one. There are many people who want to know that such a topic is posted and want to read about it. I don't think such questions should be in a hidden place that is unknown to the general public.

If you take a question like "what's the difference between 'tits' and 'boobs'?" and change it to "what's the difference between slang terms for breasts", there is not even the slightest doubt about the content of the question. Anyone who sees it can ignore it as they choose, and anybody who clicks on it and sees the words has no justification for getting offended.

Now, the title for "suck it up ho" is more difficult to formulate such that the content is crystal clear, but that is partly because it is such a poor question, about a phrase that nobody ever says. (Personally I think the question should be closed.)

I understand that titles should be as informative as possible. Surely there can be a reasonable caveat to that, where one can make the title as informative as possible without resorting to vulgar language in the title itself?

Personally, I am completely in favor of good questions about taboo subjects. I am not bothered by vulgar question titles. But I think that keeping the question title clean is a good compromise that does not require a technical solution and doesn't hide these questions in a dark alley either.

Answer 3

Proposal: (needs work admittedly)

A question regarding the usage or origin of slang may be considered acceptable if there is a prevailing or demonstrable requirement to define the slang or to provide it's origin.

In the case of trying to understand a local colloquialism (the use of slang), usage of the original statement, including contextual clues from the surrounding conversation, should be given (cited?) in the question. Failing to do so would deem the question unanswerable, and subject to be closed.

I realize the point of this question is in regards to question titles, but if the question body is no better than the title (in terms of vulgarity) then the title alone won't suffice to keep the question or make it reasonable. Having a clean title and a crap question doesn't make the question palatable. So while this answer may not fit here exactly, it's a close fit and somewhere for this to be voiced.

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Examples:

For instance, the boobs vs tits would've been acceptable had it been presented as thus:

I have a coworker who's constantly talking about girls boobs and tits. He works in the US, and I work in {insert other country here}. What is the difference in those two terms? I know they refer to breasts, but why?

For instance, the "suck it up ho" might have been acceptable had it been presented as thus:

I continuously hear films or youtube videos telling people to "suck it up ho" and I don't understand what this line means. The context tells me it should mean to deal with a problem, but what is the meaning of this phrase?

Thus making the questions more "academic" and less "urban dictionary".

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That's my interjection in this debate. Comments, questions, rude remarks?

Answer 4

Deciding that certain words are taboo and mincing the titles is antithetical to a serious academic treatment of legitimate questions. Such censorship makes this site less mature, not more. It also hinders learning, which is the main purpose of the site.

Medical professionals deal with taboo topics all the time. If a doctor or nurse used euphemisms to avoid socially taboo terms, you would likely question their professionalism. I would consider English.SE censoring shit → sh*t to be analogous to a gynecologist saying "vajayjay" instead of "vagina".

English.SE should take a clinical approach and treat all words as valid topics for discussion, provided that the question meets usual quality standards. A better way to prevent Urban Dictionary-type questions would be to close them as "off-topic: general reference" or invent a new "off-topic: non-standard English" closure reason.