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Now that the Summer of Love has turned to autumn and winter is approaching rapidly (at least in my part of the world) can we be a bit meaner to the word "please" in question titles...

There are 5,033 questions on Stack Overflow that have please in the title (and were not deleted at the time of the last data.se refresh). Of the 1,548 undeleted questions posted in 2012 so far 253 have been closed and the average score is just 0.16. This average is a little skewed (by 0.022) by a single question with 40 votes and there are just 198 questions with a score greater than 1.

Increasing the scope to include "plz" and "pls" as suggested in the comments doesn't change much, but they'd definitely deserve to be included if it wasn't for the PLS file format, which excludes "pls"

A simple search on please in the title resolves into a number of candidates for the "The Friday Afternoon Off-Topic Question Massacre".

Here are some examples (bad ones because they're juicier):


and some random ones from the middle that either have appalling titles or simply don't need the word please in them (plus some unconstructives):

jquery explode()
Please explain the following code?
Please suggest a Java Framework to make the CRUD easy
C#: IEnumerable, GetEnumerator, a simple, simple example please!
Please explain the use of JavaScript closures in loops

Simply put, "please" is unnecessary in a question title; it encourages bad titles and can be an indicator of a bad question. (I'd be interested to know the number of deleted questions that started out with a please. I suspect it'd be quite high.)

I don't really believe that word bans work that well but is there a way of being extra mean to questions that use the word? Maybe:

  1. Automatic Low Quality review queue (I suspect this happens already)
  2. Automatic Close Votes queue (maybe a bit harsh but it requires someone to vote for it)
  3. Ban anyone who approves an edit to a question with the word please in the title without changing it (maybe could be extended!) from reviewing edits for a few days.

Should please be looked upon more favourably than I'm suggesting? If you agree is there actually anything that can be done?

Please note that the title is an actual question title, Server does not execute Page Load event when re-entering URL in browser, and is intentional.

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Don't forget about plz and pls. "pls give me a workable solution". –  Rob W Nov 22 '12 at 18:53
It's far more worse than the use of "problem," though nowhere near as useful or relevant. –  Jeff Mercado Nov 22 '12 at 19:05
I'll see you a "C language ques plz tell answer" @RobW :-). –  ben is uǝq backwards Nov 22 '12 at 20:12
"far more worse" ಠ_ಠ –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Nov 22 '12 at 20:27
I get that it's worth having a look at some of these titles, but reallly? You're suggesting automatically putting a question in the delete queue because someone used the word please? Can you imagine just how bad a perception this politeness intolerance policy gives? Use case-by-case review. Rewrite. Find a genuine reason to vote to close. Spot bad posts for better reasons. Titles that don't mention the problem is the issue here, not the word please. Wow this comes across as misanthropic. –  AndrewC Nov 22 '12 at 23:24
Where do I mention delete? I was drawing a correlation between the use of a word in the title and the general quality of the question. If the correlation is provable (and I don't have access to the delete stats) then why not automatically put the question in the Low Quality queue. You won't be able to delete it as it has to be closed first. There isn't actually a delete queue, 10k + users can see questions with recent delete votes and I guess mods a lot more but no queue (thankfully or the internet bonfire would be massive). –  ben is uǝq backwards Nov 22 '12 at 23:26
@AndrewC - Also, posts in the low quality queue should be edited first, then if it's not possible to improve them, delete them. I don't think Ben's suggestion is quite as bad as you make it out to be. At the same time, I agree no post should ever be auto-deleted without some form of manual review. I'm also not sure Ben's use of the word "mean" is appropriate. Everything we do should be done in the spirit of teaching, guiding, and improving the overall quality of the Q&A, not done as some form of old-testament punishment to the user. ;) –  jmort253 Nov 23 '12 at 1:05
Sorry, I meant the Close queue. Low quality is fine - that's for "looks like it might be a problem, human please check", but Close queue is excessive. If it needs to be, it'll jump to the close queue quickly from the low quality queue (which gets emptied regularly). Don't put stuff in an overfull queue without human intervention. Banning someone from making bad reviews is a separate (and non-trivial) issue, and you certainly shouldn't do it automatically on the strength purely of leaving the word please in. If reviewing were that clear cut we wouldn't need humans to do it. –  AndrewC Nov 23 '12 at 7:26
The best I've seen: needed please guys urgent i dont how to manage this script. "Urgent" is a good indicator, too. –  Lev Levitsky Nov 23 '12 at 11:21

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