Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

The reason they're mandatory was made quite clear when it was added: Titles make it easier to find the images in Google searches, thus drawing more people to the site.

In theory…

In practice we [mods] think it's mainly a chore, as we noticed image uploads have dropped nearly 40%-50% since their introduction. And the argument for them being mandatory is moot, since 90% of the titles are pointless comments by the uploader or spoil the punchline.

I agree. The tag thing was a good idea which helped searching images less of a chore. And sources are good for giving the artist needed attention. But mandatory titles just seem so unnecessary, and most people just make jokes titles or dont upload at all.

+1

All mandatory titles are rn is a pain. If we were to try to push every use to use good titles, and fix the titles for every image, it would take… forever, piss off a lot of people, and for… better SEO?

I'm sorry, it really doesn't feel like it's worth it at all.

If mandatory titles are causing such a drop of upload activity for the sake of better searchability, why make them as important as tags in the first place? For all we know, the preferred titling style at the moment is either copypasted text from the image or just a few words. If you do plan to get rid of mandatory titling, we may end up having to deal with the Untitled Images section in the admin area.

I have been uploading a lot of pics, and I'll admit that the main reason I posted so many is that I have a ton of free time. That gave me the patience to sit through mandatory titling. If you change it, my habits may not change but it might increase user activity. Whatever it takes to save this soon-to-be-barren site is fine by me.

Totally in favour tbh

I know that several of my friends who were previously big uploaders on KYM have gone completely inactive on account of how difficult it is now to mass-upload images. Most of them were just here to share memes for recreation and didn't have the free time or patience to indulge in the site's vision of being a fully fleshed out database. I personally don't even think mandatory tags are worth it for the obvious suppressive effect it has on upload quantity, but I suppose it's not too much to ask. Mandatory titles on the other hand just go into diminishing returns territory. I'm sure the average image is of marginally higher quality now, but it's not worth slowly strangling the userbase that keeps the site running.

Hmm. When put that way it might be the best idea, it's actual evidence that it's not the best idea, or at least points towards it being better off without titles. Plus, tags are already there for that.

I would love it if titles were optional! Most of my image titles are either "Title" or text from the source (almost always in another language) because it's too much of a hassle to think of a good title for every image I upload.

In hindsight, the removal makes sense. Tags are pretty much distinctive in itself and adding titles means a bit more work. It's not really a super big deal imho, but it wouldn't hurt to remove the requirement.

mass uploading when

I agree as well.

I will still upload images with titles regardless of the change, but I can understand that requirement is really an annoyance to deal with it to some people. I think it's best that we give the people the choice to put a title in their image.

I agree with the removal of this rule since I can't come up with every new name for every image I find on the net. I think the tags do a good enough job on finding images on this site.

I agree with the removal of mandatory titles, big time.

Mandatory titles are basically a nuisance for people that upload images and tags do a better job when it comes to finding images anyway.

Not to mention that some people fill in the title field with gibberish or pointless commentary anyway so that "SEO purpose" may as well be useless.

I don't really mind mandatory titles, I usually try make something semi-descriptive, but I would prefer it as option, it just makes uploading quicker.

I feel like it's good reflection on what your doing with the image -

looks at my images

ok yeah no mandatory titles

Using text from the image isn't bad because it helps people find the image through search. You don't need to come up with a clever title.

What about instances where the image has no text, or only has text identical to the title of the entry? Particularly if someone is mass-uploading such images there's a proclivity to use identical generic titles for all of them since the alternative, describing each image, consumes too much time.

Giving alternate suggestions still completely misses the issue of titles being a chore to our uploaders and that them being mandatory contributes little to their intended purpose of improving search results.

The intentions were good, but they failed and now its existance is hurting our uploads.