Also single word titles are more likely to duplicate than multiword titles. Yes, and? One should realize that titles are just, uhm, titles. They are not a list of keywords to an index. If books can have 30 long chapters with one-word titles that don't screw up the index, certainly a one word title for a node of a few lines should be ok.

Also if it is a single word "Haxml" and somebody searches for it then they get directed immediatly to this Haxml node instead of being given a list of nodes related to Haxml. Is this broken behavior? That depends. If it's the only node with "Haxml" in the title, it's not broken. If it's a top level node whose title consists of just "Haxml", and there are no other top level nodes with "Haxml" in the title, it's not broken. If it's an 11 level deep reply, and there are other nodes with "Haxml" in the title, I'd sure call that broken behaviour.

I think the advantage of discriptive titles and better searching is far more important than single word subject lines. Now you are implying two things I disagree with. First you are implying that one word titles could not be good subject lines. That I disagree with. It doesn't mean that any one word subject line is good, but it's certainly not true that any one word subject line doesn't describe the node accurately. The second thing you imply is that the search functionality is good, and people getting send to the wrong pages, or presented a wrong list of options, is caused by people using one-word titles. I'd say, the search functionality is broken. (I haven't bothered with "search" for years - I always go straight to super search. Search seldomly gives me what I want). Don't blame the data if the algorithm is broken.

If it's an 11 level deep reply, and there are other nodes with "Haxml" in the title, I'd sure call that broken behaviour.

Not broken, but a victim of the (desirable, IMO) conflation of search and goto functionality. The search box allows you to:

enter a full title, and go directly to that node, or a list of nodes if the title is duplicated; otherwise

go directly to a title containing the search words, or a list of titles if there are more than one.

The search functionality is really secondary, but is blocked when people use overly general node titles (read: one-word).

On a completely different front, replies that have the previous title and Re: completely removed I find obnoxious; if you want to change the title, I like to see it done with "New title (was: Re: parent title)" or "Re: parent title (new title)".

Then, by all means, fix the search functionality.

Patches welcome.

One should realize that titles are just, uhm, titles. They are not a list of keywords to an index.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. The node titles are keyword lists (in addition to being plain titles). Understanding this fact should go a long way towards understanding why site policy regarding titles is the way it is. Which is why your protestation that:

it's certainly not true that any one word subject line doesn't describe the node accurately.

is entirely beside the point. Good titles should be able to serve as abstracts of the node or thread (just as Mr. Lee suggests, elsewhere in this thread). "HaXml", like most one-word titles, fails miserably in this, because it doesn't tell me anything about the node — other than, perhaps, that the word "HaXml" also appears in the node body. The title ought, at the very least, to mention "Haskell", don't you think?

In addition, I believe that, as a general rule, node titles which look like root node titles (i.e. there's no "Re:" in front) should only be used on nodes that look like root nodes. One recent breach of this standard is Shorter code. Such a title conveys zero information about the node's content. In fact, one must resort not only to ancestor nodes in that thread to discover the context, but to other non-ancestor nodes in the thread. That's a crappy retitling indeed... and it doesn't even suffer from the "one-word title" disease. "HaXml" is that much worse, because it does.

The node titles are keyword lists Then more than 99% of the nodes have insufficient titles. Not just the one word titles.

The title ought, at the very least, to mention "Haskell", don't you think? Why? Why should it mention Haskell? Should it also mention Extended markup language in the title? Or should it mention Haskell because of all the people on perlmonks searching for nodes discussing Haskell? But the node doesn't discuss Haskell. In fact, it's parent node has more Haskell related content than the HaXml node. But the parent node is title "Re^10: Better mousetrap (getting top N values from list X)", although it doesn't discuss mousetraps at all (but was the title of this node, or any of its ancestors considered? Bet not). It doesn't even discuss lists, or getting the top N values. But that's fine. But a reply that mentions HaXml gets all the flak - flak it wouldn't have had if it used a title mentioning mousetraps and lists, while not discussing any of them. Come on, give me any good reason why we're discussing whether or not "HaXml" covers the content of the article, and why we are not discussing the mousetrap title of its parent.

In addition, I believe that, as a general rule, node titles which look like root node titles (i.e. there's no "Re:" in front) should only be used on nodes that look like root nodes. I think, in general, that data shouldn't be duplicated. Whether or not a node is a root node or not is already known to the system because of its lack of ancestors. The newest node page doesn't have a problem with it - it's not using the existence of a leading 'Re:' to determine where on the page to list new nodes.

In fact, one must resort not only to ancestor nodes in that thread to discover the context, but to other non-ancestor nodes in the thread. Oh, right. It's common that a node that's referring to more than one node in the thread reflects that in the title. Like say, all the nodes benchmarking the proposed solutions to a problem. I think not.

"HaXml" is that much worse, because it does. Agreed. "Re^11: Better mousetrap (getting top N values from list X)" would have told me instantly what the node was about. Just like its parent.

Patches welcome.

No. I don't think the functionality is broken - I am not the one thinking one word titles need to be renamed by policy.