It seems that the word "question" is not allowed in question titles on Stack Overflow.

I tried to give that question this title:

Error in SDTT for QAPage with multiple Question items: "Exactly one Question expected on page for QAPage."

and got the error:

These words are not allowed in titles: 'Question'.. See Writing Good Titles.

In the title I tried to use, "Question" is a technical term (it’s the name of the type as defined in Schema.org’s RDF), and it’s also part of the error message which Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool outputs. So it’s not used as in "Question about …", which is probably the reason for the ban.

Proposal: Allow "question" (case-insensitive) in titles if it’s enclosed in quotation marks.

This would allow titles like these:

  • Error in SDTT for 'QAPage' with multiple 'Question' items: "Exactly one Question expected on page for QAPage."

  • SDTT error: "Exactly one Question expected on page for QAPage."

  • 'QAPage' with multiple 'Question' items allowed?

  • 11
    How will the user know it will be allowed in quotation marks? – ayhan Aug 27 '18 at 12:48
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    @user2285236: I guess it’s not important to mention this exception in SE’s error message. When people quote e.g. an error message in the title, they would typically/hopefully use quotation marks anyway, so in such a case it works just like that. In cases where it’s a technical term, they might try to add quotation marks (it was the first thing I tried in another question that was also about the Question Schema.org type), or they have to rephrase the title (what they currently have to do anyway). – unor Aug 27 '18 at 12:59
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    I’m aware that there are cases where "question" in the title is useful, but where quotation marks wouldn’t make sense. So this proposal here is not about catching all valid cases, but just one type of case (quoting error messages, technical terms etc.), with a solution that shouldn’t affect the cases for which "question" is banned in the first place. – unor Aug 27 '18 at 13:03
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    @user2285236 Say it in the error message. – Trilarion Aug 27 '18 at 13:12
  • 18
    I think that a fix to this can be important because we don't have (or want) a question tag or any other key part that, if another person with the same issue is searching for a solution, will be contributing to the searchability of this question. If the title is more general, like "Error in SDTT for QAPage with multiple items," or however to remove the word Questions, it's going to be really hard for someone else to know the question applies to them when deciding what to click from the search results. So I think we do need a fix to this. – Davy M Aug 27 '18 at 14:01
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    If this feature gets implemented, then it might be worth modifying the question to be "How can I use the word 'question' in my title when I actually need it?" That way if someone is trying to post something that needs the word question, they can search meta and learn that we do have a way to do it, if you put the word in quotes. That way it's not so obvious that people will make titles like «I have a question!» and, upon getting title blocked, change it to «I have a "question"!», but someone who actually needs to put "question" in their question can find that there is a way to do it. – Davy M Aug 27 '18 at 18:37
  • SO filter should also ban "Segmentation Fault" (unless enclosed in quotes) – Jean-François Fabre Mod Aug 27 '18 at 19:09
  • @Jean-FrançoisFabre If it's not a real problem that the OP can't post questions that include the verbatim error message they're asking about, could you suggest some alternate question titles that would avoid the problem? – Brian Aug 27 '18 at 19:12
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    it was half a joke. Most "segmentation fault" questions are followed by a wall of code, no MCVE, and "use a debugger" comments. – Jean-François Fabre Mod Aug 27 '18 at 19:19
  • Just use leet: Questi0n – Dexygen Aug 29 '18 at 20:43
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    IMHO, all these filters and rules about how you express things should be implemented as soft suggestions: the site tells you why including the word "question" is redundant and not a great idea, and suggests some rewordings, then you can choose what to do. – Steve Bennett Aug 30 '18 at 1:37

That quotation mark thing is a bit specialized. But revamping the list of words in that list is long overdue; the bad titles of today are not the bad titles of 2011.

So I did a quick check to see what words are most commonly used in bad titles now and, critically, not commonly used in titles on well-received questions.

A few observations:

  • This isn't, like, scientific or nothin'. I ran some queries.
  • Titles under 40 characters in length are more likely to do badly than to do well.
  • The presence of the word "my" is the single best predictor of a bad question when used in a title no longer than 40 characters.

So with that in mind, here's the crappy new regex policing your titles:



no errors for the asker's title however

Your title goes through no problem. But this one...

Title cannot contain "My c# problem question"


  • 5
    NOOOOOOOOOO!. You've increased the block restrictions so much that it's now impossible to edit MANY questions. :( – Cœur Aug 30 '18 at 6:44
  • Oh, does it mean that I just need to increase the length of the title to 41 chars to support any word in it? Can you clarify that in the red error message, by highlighting that the title is actually TOO SHORT to be good? – Cœur Aug 30 '18 at 6:47
  • Short titles are fine, @Cœur; titles with any of these words are fine; what hurts are short titles without specific information, of which these words are a hallmark. Munging the words or padding the title doesn't fix that. – Shog9 Aug 30 '18 at 16:35
  • I did had to do padding here to workaround the new filter. Maybe you could lift off this restriction when it's a title EDIT (2nd revision, etc.) and only apply it for the question creation? – Cœur Aug 31 '18 at 1:59
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    I don't know if that question was really worth all the effort, @Cœur - but here's what I'd have recommended: stackoverflow.com/posts/34101585/revisions – Shog9 Aug 31 '18 at 2:36
  • So... How do JavaScript closures work?, Can comments be used in JSON?, How can I make a time delay in Python? are all bad titles and should be renamed immediately? – Nick Aug 31 '18 at 11:51
  • Immediately? No, there's no need @NickA. But those aren't the questions being asked today either. – Shog9 Aug 31 '18 at 21:39
  • @Shog9 It was more meant in jest :) I appreciate there's no point in changing the names of all of the question that were previously valid but no longer. – Nick Sep 1 '18 at 18:05
  • I see we're now blocking use of the Perl my keyword in titles :P – Laurel Oct 2 '18 at 16:09
  • Well, not in that title, @Laurel – Shog9 Oct 2 '18 at 16:11
  • Very annoying now to edit Questions with, say, "app" or "work" in the title. – pkamb Nov 14 '19 at 6:38

This keyword filter is really uneffective as is.

  • The user can circumvent the limitation with deliberate spelling errors: I saw "Porblem with linked lists" title more than once. So why not "Qestion about linked lists" ?
  • If it's suddenly allowed in quotes, the error message should indicate "Quote it for it to be accepted", so the user will quote it instead of misspelling it:

I have a "question" on linked lists .

A warning like the one we get (sometimes wrongly) when writing a question would be enough in those cases too:


The feature exists. User can choose to ignore it (like I did a lot and got upvotes instead). You could put "Question" and you wouldn't get downvotes (well, not because of the title, that is)

So let's reserve the post block for blank or offensive titles.

  • 2
    It does make sense to tell users to rephrase their questions if the title contains "question", though. Maybe that could be made optional. – lucidbrot Aug 29 '18 at 17:05
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    @lucidbrot Exactly. We should show a warning message with some examples of bad and good titles, and suggestions on how to rephrase the title, then allow them to post the question. Maybe add a checkbox where they state that they understand the rules but it doesn't apply to their case. – totymedli Aug 29 '18 at 20:33
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    For comparison, Wikipedia's edit filters have four different levels of actions: disallow (reject, but give the user a link to report false positives), warn (user sees a message but still has the option to proceed), tag (edit is tagged for review by patrollers), and log (mainly used for testing new filters). Lots of fun examples. – ahiijny Aug 29 '18 at 20:37
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  • such regex poetry :) – Jean-François Fabre Mod Aug 30 '18 at 11:49

I support allowing "Question" in a title: in the current situation, users are basically forced to circumvent the block.


I believe the original goal was to prevent excessive usage of "Question about.*" patterns, so my proposal is:

Allow Question in a title if it's not the very first word.

  • right, that couldn't hurt. It would filter some wrong titles. – Jean-François Fabre Mod Aug 28 '18 at 8:12
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    Please also block it when it's the last word, as per the examples you provide for migrated questions. – Luuklag Aug 28 '18 at 11:03
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    I have a question... – Johannes Kuhn Aug 28 '18 at 16:51
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    haha.. I wanted to fix the code indentation of the "Basic programming C question" but couldn't because it had "question" in the title. – Michael Aug 29 '18 at 13:32
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    Most of your examples titles/questions seem like evidence in favor of the filter. The first two 1, 2 have it as not being noise (though the first has dubious quality), while the rest could have "question" removed without loosing any information. (Note that I am not arguing for the filter, but these examples don't make the case very well) – Will Aug 29 '18 at 20:51

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