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The seems to suffer from bad titles quite often. This might only be subjective, but I have the feeling that there are often questions like

How to I make this symbol?

where they really write "this symbol" and to not describe the symbol. (I've just corrected this problem for What is this symbol consisting of a horizontal line crossed by a rotated vertial line?.)

The problem of those titles is that it makes it hard for others who have the same question to find the question.

I think we should mention that in the tag wiki. But I don't know how to formulate it. Could somebody please have a look at it?

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  • The first action a Q like this will most likely get is a link to How to look up a symbol or identify a math symbol or character? and meybe even closed as duplicate (if the symbol is widely used and contained with some package).
    – Johannes_B
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 8:39
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    I think vagueness of the titles are justified in this particular case. You wouldn't name it as how can I draw a slanted goat head without a face to ask for \gamma for the sake of nonvagueness
    – percusse
    Commented Oct 16, 2014 at 18:42
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    @percusse On the other hand, you can say: How can I reproduce this letter-like symbol? or Looking for a symbol: square with a squirrel inside or such.
    – yo'
    Commented Oct 17, 2014 at 16:14
  • We cannot put links into teh excerpts, right? :-/
    – yo'
    Commented Oct 17, 2014 at 16:15
  • @tohecz Why do you want to put a link in the excerpt?
    – Martin Thoma
    Commented Oct 19, 2014 at 16:48
  • @moose I thought of either linking the universal symbols question there, or making a "how to ask how to get a symbol" FAQ here on meta and linking this one.
    – yo'
    Commented Oct 19, 2014 at 16:52

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It's not clear describing the symbol in the title is always an improvement or helps later searches, in fact sometimes rather the opposite.

Some special symbols need special answers but most likely these questions get answered by some general advice on how to look up a symbol, or get closed as duplicates of "How to look up a symbol or identify a math symbol or character?" in which case presumably any advice given is helpful to anyone looking up any symbol and so making it look like a specific question about say "a pile of poo" (Unicode U+F4A9) would just make it more likely that people looking for other symbols don't find the advice.

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  • Ok. You should eventually link to the question: tex.stackexchange.com/q/14/5645
    – Martin Thoma
    Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 11:05
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    but what about (non-alphabetic) symbols that (1) aren't in unicode, but (2) have published instances that can be cited, and (3) those published instances have a well-defined (if possibly not currently in vogue) meaning?
    – barbara beeton
    Commented Oct 23, 2014 at 20:58

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