Okay, but seriously.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/215506/has-anyone-used-ispconfig-3?s=1|6.2134
http://askubuntu.com/questions/277339/has-anyone-installed-real-player?s=2|6.0594
http://askubuntu.com/questions/69375/has-anyone-compiled-espeak-text-to-speech?s=4|5.2918
http://askubuntu.com/questions/588429/has-anyone-successfully-installed-syspro-on-ubuntu?s=5|5.2779
I don't know, man, has anyone, or haven't they?
AU is not a forum for discussion; we come here to get objective answers to real questions, not to make (gnu) smalltalk. Moreover, these sorts of questions get closed as primarily opinion-based because they tend to ask for opinions.
Granted, AU is far from the only site with this antipattern in titles.
- Has anyone played an mp3 file on a RaspberryPi3 and streamed the output to a bluetooth speaker? (raspberrypi.se)
- Has anyone used UXCam before? [on hold] (ux.se)
- Has anyone statistics for the number of users completing a registration for a service? (ux.se)
Maybe it's just me, but these kinds of titles seem chit-chatty, and they add to the chit-chattyness of the question following said title; rather than asking an actual question these titles seem to beg a discussion about the weather.
I'm always tempted to retitle these questions, but coming up with a good title for such a post that accurately divulges the content should be the job of the asker, not me (or other editors).
I'd like to request "Has anyone" and "Has anybody" be added to the list of terms in titles that raise a "warning" dialogue1 beside the title box when it loses focus.
1Not the sort of dialogue that prevents the question from being posted, but merely informatic (Clippy, anyone?) that such titles aren't preferred over actually helpful, descriptive titles, and perhaps a link to How do I write a good title?.
An example of the text in the dialogue could be:
Please avoid informalities like "Can someone" and "Has anyone...?" in question titles. If your motivation for asking is “I would like to participate in a discussion about this subject”, then you should not be asking here. Read more about what makes a question on-topic and constructive in the help center:
