I find myself often amending the titles of user topics, specifically when they do something like this; [Question] Can I ask a question? Whilst the wording in the question may vary, but the prefixing of topics is becoming really annoying as, in my opinion, it reduces the readability of the actual question. Often it causes the topic titles to wrap around on the Latest view also so things beginning to look a bit messy. I’ve had a glance at the settings but I can only find the ability to limit the character length or word length for topic titles, I couldn’t see an option to prevent the use of certain characters. Is there such an option, and, if not, would one be worthy of consideration? The ideal solution would be to perhaps detect the prefixing (or suffixing) and warn the user and not allow the post to be submitted perhaps rather than just basing it on a specific character being in the post. So, [Question] or [Solved] or (solved) or [Help] for example would all be candidates to not be allowed - configurable via the settings. But a post with a title like; Why do we use the [SerializeField] attribute? …would be allowed. This is kind of in line with the “title pretify” setting I suppose. Any thoughts?

Are those checked against for the topic titles Jeff? I just literally added “[Question]” under the Block option for Watched Words and was then able to post a topic which had that in the title. Update Yep, tested again, topic title is ignored from watched words it seems..

You wouldn’t get what you want either way. You’d be blocking post bodies from containing that, which is a seriously debilitating side effect.

I’ve just tested the Block option again and it doesn’t appear to be blocking anything? Am I doing something wrong? I added “Smurf” as the word. Have tried it in the title and in the body, the post goes straight through? Post bodies I don’t think we’d have the [Question] or [Solved] text added within though, so I’d be happy to take that chance, assuming the square brackets aren’t truncated or anything leaving only the actual “word”? Update Its going to be because I’m an admin isn’t it… this bypasses the Block I’m guessing?

Yes that would indeed be the reason. With great power comes blah blah blah :wink:

hehe, my spidey senses were tingling! Ok, I’ll test again impersonating someone and see how it goes, thanks for the suggestion of the watched words, will tread gently to start with and see what happens, just really want to stop all this prefixing… the more users that see other users doing it seem to then follow suit so its breeding more and more…

Can you prevent specific characters in a topic title?

Product Support

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) January 11, 2019, 12:26am 2

You could add it to the Watched Words, but there’s no setting covering the “just in the topic title” scenario.

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Can you prevent specific characters in a topic title?

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