I just posted a thread in GQ regarding an old dinosaur of a computer question. There’s a typo in the title, but the edit function will only let me fix the typos in the post - not the title. Why is that?
Because vB confines editing of thread titles to moderators/administrators.
I have fixed your typo for you.
This is something you can alert mods to through the 'report this post" function. We’ll fix it for you, no problem.
Thanks for fixing the typo, Dame Bighorn*, but I was here in the days before we even had an edit function. I still post with the expectation that if I make a typo; I’m just going to have to live with it. I know it’s the vb; I just want to know why.
Not that I care about it all that much. We had the function for years and I never noticed that quirk till now. Just curious.
*No offense intended. Just having fun.
I do want an answer besides “that’s just the way it is”, however.
I think you’d be better served asking the designers of vBulletin. Here’s a good answer:
I other words, since all posts (not just the first one) can have titles, vBulletin stores thread titles separately, and thus classes editing them under the thread tools that moderators have, rather than under the post editing tools posters have. It would seem that, to give the OP the ability to edit his thread title would be extremely complicated due to how the system was created. You either have the ability to edit all thread titles, or none, and either always or never.
Sure, the staff could maybe hack it, but their opposed to that for reasons given quite often in the past.
Oh, O.K. Thanks, BigT.
It seems that vb reserves that particular edit function to admins alone. Question asked, question answered. One final parting thought. Tuba Diva, you were correct, but way too terse. Try to take just a sec to explain how and why next time.
Didn’t mean to be terse - or rude or anything, even – there’s just not a lot to say about why vB does what it do.
For reasons only known to the developers of vB titles are handled differently from text. On this board users can edit their posts within the five-minute window from when they first hit the Send button, but thread titles are not reachable by users.
Only staffers can edit thread titles. We’re happy to do it in most cases.
On any given day I’m juggling about 15 things at once – sometimes before breakfast! – and I tend to deal with something and move on. Not to be rude or impersonal, it’s just that there’s so much to do. I hope no one here (or anywhere else) takes it personally, I’m just trying to get as much done as possible, to answer your question and his question and fix her problem and handle something else. There’s always stuff to do.
It’s all cool, Tuba. Don’t sweat your brief answer too much, because, well, it couldn’t have been more correct. There’s not a damn thing y’all could do about this particular quirk short of granting everybody admin privileges. I’ve been here for almost ten years and there is no way in hell I want us crazy bastards running the asylum. 
Well, all of us were Dopers before we became moderators, so there you have it. 
Yeah, and I, unlike Tuba, don’t have anything better to do, which is why I looked it up on Google, and then took the time to explain what I got out of it.
Being stuck at home sans work leaves you pretty bored, and with a lot of time on your hands.