Why can't question titles end with a period?

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Asked 4 months ago

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This is probably a duplicate, but gentle searching didn't turn it up; it's hard to know what'd be a good query.

I tried several times (within the grace period, so it only shows up once) to submit an edit to “Integer coefficients that sum up to sequences with integrals in e.g.f”. Notice that that's an end-of-sentence period, not part of the title; the actual title is missing the final period. I assumed that the post author had just missed it, but, nope, it is manually stripped from the title.

I know the SE software does some often-inappropriate mangling of posted text. Is this one of those instances, or is it some other error?

asked Jul 22 at 14:18

LSpice

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$\begingroup$ This post on Meta Stack Exchange is tagged status-bydesign: Why can't I end a question title with a full stop? Sometimes it's appropriate. $\endgroup$
– Martin Sleziak
Commented Jul 22 at 19:39
2

$\begingroup$ Interestingly, there are posts where titles end with a full stop. So they were allowed at some point. This is the most recent example returned by that query: On constructing free action of the cyclic group $\Bbb Z/p \Bbb Z$ on $\prod_i S^n$($n$ is odd) which is not conjugate to the usual action. $\endgroup$
– Martin Sleziak
Commented Jul 22 at 19:47
$\begingroup$ It doesn't cost rep to use letters in titles, the character limit is high enough. It increases searchability for when people use the whole phrase. Why would you not just expand the acronym? $\endgroup$
– Nij
Commented Jul 23 at 2:57
1

$\begingroup$ @Nij, I think that is a different question. Since it's not my post, and the title is not clearly wrong (except the missing period), I don't find it appropriate for me to change it. My question here is about the software, and would apply equally well if the question title were too long to expand the abbreviation. $\endgroup$
– LSpice
Commented Jul 23 at 3:54
$\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak, re, another example, 11 years old (much older than yours) but just bumped to the front page: “Functors on rigid tensor categories.”. $\endgroup$
– LSpice
Commented Jul 23 at 13:46
$\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak, and from 3 years ago (newer than your MO example but on MSE): “Fibonacci-like sequences mod $p$ where $a_{n+1}$ only really depends on $a_n$.”. $\endgroup$
– LSpice
Commented Jul 23 at 13:56
1

$\begingroup$ @LSpice Did you test what happens if you try to post a new question with a title ending with a full stop on MO? From this SEDE query I found a post on Mathematics only two days ago: Express $(\alpha)^{-1},(\alpha+1)^{-1}, (\alpha^2+1)^{-1}$ in terms of $a_0+a_1\alpha+a_2\alpha^2$ for $a_i\in\Bbb{Q}$. (And I was able to post on that site such question - which I immediately deleted.) $\endgroup$
– Martin Sleziak
Commented Jul 23 at 14:14
1

$\begingroup$ Tangentially, mods probably can find out which input is blacklisted in the titles. At least on Mathematics, the mods were able to get such information: Which are blacklisted tags and blacklisted phrases? $\endgroup$
– Martin Sleziak
Commented Jul 23 at 15:22
$\begingroup$ Hi, @MartinSleziak—re, no, I did not try; I'm not quite comfortable with whether site norms are friendly to such an experiment, but I am happy to do so if it's the appropriate next step. $\endgroup$
– LSpice
Commented Jul 23 at 18:41
1

$\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak I don’t think periods at the end of titles are blacklisted. My understanding is that they are just silently stripped from the title, but the post or edit goes through. When a word is blacklisted, the system refuses to accept the post entirely. $\endgroup$
– Emil Jeřábek
Commented Jul 25 at 7:36
1

$\begingroup$ @EmilJeřábek In any case, this has to be something specific to MO - as you can see in the previous comments, they are allowed on Mathematics. $\endgroup$
– Martin Sleziak
Commented Jul 25 at 9:24

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