I've seen a handful of series 4 skips, whose authors are inactive, that have survived on the mainlist but don't have a proper name on it. Almost all of them are either called [UNTITLED] or [UNTITLED (WORD)]. Hell, SCP-3822 doesn't even have a placeholder title! My question is should there be a policy for giving articles names after a certain period of time, when their authors have not done so and do not respond to Wikidot PMs? SCP-1848 would be exempt from this rule, since it's intentionally left blank.
I don't believer they're placeholders. Most of the [UNTITLED] skips deliberately lack titles, iirc.
3993, 3491, and everything by king pogan don't give any indication the authors didn't want them to have titles. As far as I can tell, the authors coldposted them and the latter two didn't seem to care if their works did good or bad.
No.
imo.
Why should authors be obligated to title their work?
I agree, but IMO all untitled articles should at least get a placeholder [UNTITLED], to avoid confusion with the [ACCESS DENIED] empty slots or mistakes.
There's at least a couple of articles where "Access Denied" is supposed to be the title, aren't there?
According to scpper there are 3 articles with [ACCESS DENIED], SCP-1848, SCP-4315 and SCP-3822.
1848 is supposed to be titled access denied, but there is no indication access denied was deliberately selected for the other two, as opposed to being left untitled (unless there's an in-article justification - I only read the discussion pages and skimmed the articles)
I'm not saying they should be obligated to name them. I'm asking why shouldn't they be named if the authors don't care?
I'm asking why shouldn't they be named if the authors don't care?
Probably because we don't have confirmation that the authors for sure don't care?
I'm totally fine with putting in a placeholder [UNTITLED] to indicate works that were never given a title.
Maybe the author forgot. Maybe they haven't got the right pun/meme for it. Maybe they just want it to be [ACCESS DENIED]. Maybe they want to name it after a certain milestone is achieved. Who knows? Who cares? It's a part of an article, which means it's the author's prerogative as to what it should be. Policing it would just put unnecessary burden on the staff.
That's why I specified 'if they haven't responded to Wikidot PMs.' If they want to keep it as [ACCESS DENIED] for any of the reasons you stated, they have full right to do so. If they haven't responded to PMs or shown any indication they're still active, for over half a year, they probably don't care. If for whatever reason do they come back, they can simply change the title to what they want. They could even rename it to [ACCESS DENIED] if they wanted.
I hadn't considered how it would affect staff though. I didn't think it would be a burden considering how infrequent it is.
If it is becoming a problem, as in making unnecessary confusion, then it should be changed. If not, then, as Rigen states, it would make a burden for staff. You could, in the future, make a policy where new posts have to be changed to [Untitled] if there is no name to stop this trend if you want. Just an idea, but something you would have to then police in the future. It all depends if it is causing an actual problem on the site or if it is just plain old annoying.
I've started a discussion on the staff site here: http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-8616934/untitled-articles
Feel free to message me if there are any points you would like specifically brought up in the staff discussion.