Looking at other thread titles I would expect to see often in GQ, I was suprised that “What is this insect?” has been used only twice–and that both times (13 years apart) the answer was “crane fly.”
So maybe there needs to be a pop-up if someone attempts to reuse that title that says Are you sure this isn’t a crane fly?
I don’t understand your point here. Why would you want it to do that? The point of a discussion board is to discuss things with people. Even General Questions wants discussion about the question, it doesn’t shut down a thread when the question is answered. That’s why someone saying “just google it” is frowned upon.
On reddit I read a board called what is this thing? It has I don’t know how many thousands of posts, yet none of them are titled simply what is this thing? It’s what is this thing that looks like a paint can I found in the forest? (it was a paint can) or what is this metal thing I found magnet fishing in Brazil? (no one knew) or what is this thing that looks like a mortar round I found buried in a battlefield in France? (it was a mortar round).
If it’s something that gets posted every other week, you’ll get a link to their FAQ that explains where to find the answer. So post away, just use descriptive titles, like you already are supposed to on the Dope, and everything works just fine.
That is something that is known as a “joke.”
No it wasn’t. Jokes are funny. Way to ignore the whole rest of the post though.
Okay, I think that the rest of your post is wrong. I think “What insect is this?” is a perfectly valid thread topic to determine if you wish to read a post, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together would know that the body of the post almost certainly will contain description and possibly photos and/or videos of said insect. I think that being never allowed again to use the same topic even 20 years later is deeply stupid.
It isn’t just the “absolutely no duplicate thread titles evah”, it is the “your title must have x number of characters” and “your post must have x number of characters” and “your post must be a complete sentence” and the various other ways this software acts as a junior mod itself. It is adults being forced to use the internet with training wheels on in an attempt to forcibly socialize them into one person’s idea of what web fora are “supposed” to be like. And it is software designed to maximize automatization of moderation and to “optimize search engine results”–it is a product aimed at pleasing site owners, not at providing ease of use for posters.
I suppose no one else is interested in a rule that all thread titles must be duplicates.
I chuckled for what it’s worth.
Also, for bonus points, all of the words must be search stopwords – that is, all topic titles must be duplicates, and consist only of words in the top 50 most common English words!
That’ll fix things up real good.
I have to stay, i don’t like the “no duplicates” rule, but it is an incredibly minor issue. And I’m surprised to see this topic get so salty.
Well, it has happened. I’ve now seen a thread title that complains about not being the title the poster wanted at least twice. I don’t recall what the topics were about, just noticed that the software seems to nudge people to post things like
“some ordinary topic title – I’m adding extra words because Discourse won’t let me re-use that title”
and
"yay!
plus extra characters because Discourse thinks my post is too short"
Neither seems great to me, but I can’t say that I think it’s a huge deal.
Yes, heaven forbid people not be able to do exactly as they please at all times. Ah, the tragedy of the commons. 
All that I’m saying is that I hate (parts) of Discord with the firey hate of one sun. (Other parts I’m okay with.)
And it worked, right? The thread got posted, people were able to read and comment on it. It probably took the OP all of 5 seconds to add a extra word. No harm, no foul.
It’s just one poster that’s over the top on this non-problem.
What’s the minimum character count for a post? All this poster would have had to do is post “yay!!!” or add any smiley and they would be fine. Heck, you don’t need to post any words at all just post almost any smiley and you are fine.
Just because you are an insect guy and run around taking photos of insects all the time doesn’t mean everyone does. In case you didn’t notice in your two gotcha links, neither one of the OPs were able to get a picture of the insect.
This is why I said you are ranting about a non-problem. This is approaching Qanon territory. Of course it’s someone’s idea of what “web fora” should be like. Were they supposed to design something specifically with you in mind? Honestly, if you think this platform is making it hard for people to post maybe the internets aren’t for you.
See, here, again, you are doing what you told me not to do–“posting your imaginings about what I post.” You are using propaganda language against me, saying that I am “ranting”, implying that I am in a spittle-flecked apoplexy as I pound away with rage on the keyboard. But it was nothing more to me than one casual conversation out of many casual conversations I’m having on this board. You are the one getting highly emotional, making personal attacks against me, and making false accusations against me.
You claim that I demand that codinghorror change this in all of the Discord sites, yet I haven’t a single time demanded, asked politely, or even whispered towards asking him to change it anywhere at all. I have critisized features of Discord, yes. I think that Discord is marketed more at the convinence of the web site owners than that of the end users, yes. But the claim here by you that I am “demanding” changes is untrue, just as the same claim about me on “that other board” is untrue.
It seems to be my sarcastic remark to codinghorror that set you off (that, and the termnity to imbed a small jpeg in the post.) And I do (somewhat) apoligize to @codinghorror for that–he doesn’t seem to be a terrible person. But the “I’m forcing you to do things my way because it is the right way” attitude often expressed just seems almost Steve Jobsian at times.
Those were not two “gotcha” links. I was curious about past instances of duplicate thread titles, tried to think of instances, and knew GQ bug ID questions come up fairly often, so I searched for that. When I saw that two identically-titled posts bad tbe same answer, I thought it was interesting. I pointed it out in what was a joke post about it, and nothing more. I already explained that it was a joke but you are still enraged by it. Trust me, that post was not directed at you. Trust me, I am not likely to ever intentionally direct a post at you again.
This board is using Discourse, not Discord.
Carry on.
Well that was just a poor choice then, wasn’t it?
I’ve posted to that subreddit. Choice of title can be difficult. If you did post “what is this thing” your submission would be declined due to nonspecific title. I’ve submitted a post three or four times before the auto-moderator allowed it to be posted and reviewed by a human.
I agree with you that @Darren_Garrison is a bit off target with the Discourse criticism, but that was an A+ joke, and the rest of your post was completely irrelevant because it was based on taking that obvious joke seriously.
I suspect that Codinghorror will take that as a compliment. Steve Jobs has actually done an excellent job of predicting what people will want better than the customers themselves have. He wasn’t always right. And sometimes he was right for a majority of customers, but not for a minority, which might sometimes include both Darren_Garrison and me. But you have to admit, on a macro level, Jobs did a pretty good job of picking features.
I was thinking more of the Steve Jobs who–when faced with complaints of a poorly designed iPhone model that kept dropping signals–told everyone that they were holding their phones wrong…