Idea for an unofficial contest

Question

I have been scanning through the question feed here from time to time, because some of the titles (and in some cases, even the descriptions) of questions are very amusing when taken out of context:

• If everyone had to wear a box on their head, how would society differ?

• Can I grow a banana that will produce a mushroom cloud?

  • "I'm curious can I grow a banana which is rich in heavier unstable elements so that I can harvest and threaten my neighbor? (A single banana must be able produce fission reaction.)"

• How would having a spherical carapace benefit an animal?

  • "This question is inspired by a bowling ball"

• Personal fart power - is it viable?

• How to best upgrade your towel for military combat

• Is it possible to rain dinosaurs?

• Which will survive better - a horse-sized duck or a duck-sized horse?

• What are the limitations of apple-based weapons and construction?

• What would medieval battles look like if humans had prehensile tails?

• How would wars be fought if everyone had a nuclear hand grenade?

• How can I vaporize my enemies?

• How can I liquefy my enemies?

You get the idea. If someone saw these question titles without knowing what the site is about, they would probably assume that everyone here is a mad scientist bent on destroying the world and/or universe.

My suggestion is this: Every so often, review the new questions, and create a meta post in which people can vote for the funniest title. The award would presumably be limited to bragging rights.

Obviously, it would be necessary to avoid people asking questions exclusively for the purpose of winning the contest, but that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Answer 1

Honestly, while it's a fun idea I don't think it's needed and I don't think we should encourage people to make jokey titles rather than ones describing the question. We've already had that problem a few times where people trying to be funny put titles that are utterly meaningless when it comes to knowing what the actual question is.

Answer 2

As Tim said, and I'd like to add this:

It's sort of possible to do this with the topic challenges. I make no claims that it's the same mechanism, but still. If, for a topic challenge, you post a question with a funny yet catchy and descriptive title, people are going to want to look at it. The more people look at it, the more votes and answers you get, and you may get it to HNQ - granting even more views and votes.

The topic challenge results posts (in an answer on each challenge post) are now given stats and ordered by the total votes on the question and answers. If you've got a good title, you've got a good start in getting to the top of that list. It's not an official competition, but it's nice to see your name at the top.