I’ve had two different users contact me to ask why they weren’t able to “Create Topic” because the button was disabled and grey. It turns out that they didn’t see and understand the “N to go for the title” centered at the bottom as they were typing the title.
IMHO it would probably be helpful for this warning to be (a) somewhere in the proximity of the topic title as they are typing it, and (b) a bit more verbose, e.g., “Your title is N characters too short.”
I disagree – I think the solution is for the button to not be disabled.
Then when you click it, you’ll get the bouncy error messages.
(I don’t think they will see or understand the characters left message, regardless of what the copy says, because users don’t read anything you put on the screen.)
@neil this is another case where “mysteriously” disabled buttons causes problems. Very much not a fan of this UI technique.
I’d be down with that, too … as long as there’s a short explanation why the title needs to be more than N characters. (Good quality, etc.) Otherwise users might feel it arbitrary and stupid unless they’re told why. (Personally I’d think they’d agree once told.)
I think there was another regression, the composer error messages are not showing up at all.
I received questions concerning this too. I think it need to be clearer.
For one thing, the actual error messages need to appear. This was largely the result of another highly unfortunate regression.
Errors are back. That was another bad re-regression. 
For Monday, @neil, make sure the create topic and reply buttons are never in a disabled state – let’s just let the bouncy errors do the talking here.
It’s done. The submit button in the composer is never disabled.