I do a lot of editing. I edit a lot of MTG questions. I value titles (they're what people see when browsing or using Google), and I edit a lot of questions primarily to give them a better title.
I think that the community needs to be more aggressive about editing the titles of questions that contain almost purely card names unless they are absolutely unable to be generalized.
I do not think we need to do this. I do not think it is a good idea, or that "unless they are absolutely unable to be generalised" is a good rule of thumb. I'll explain.
Should we edit question titles that just mention two card names? Certainly!
When a question title consists of merely "Card vs Card" or "Card and Card" or so on, I'll edit the title to try to capture the interaction between those cards so as to communicate what the heck is going on.
I don't think it'll be contested that either of these retitles is better, because the "vs" says almost nothing about the situation:
Aegis of the Gods Vs. Erebos, God of the Dead → Will Aegis of the Gods negate my opponent's Erebos, God of the Dead for me?
tabernacle of pendrell vale vs. pendrell mists → Why are Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and Pendrell Mists worded differently?
So yeah, if the question is just card titles, it's probably gonna be a good candidate for retitling.
Should we generalise away the names enthusiastically? No.
So, here's the thing. Magic has a lot of cards, and a limited quantity of mechanics. Each new card combines those mechanics in new and different ways. Two cards using the same five mechanical concepts could put them in a different order and adjust the numbers and wind up not resembling each other at all. On top of that, the combination of any two remarkable cards is often incredibly unique.
We do end up revisiting the same mechanics over and over in Magic the Gathering answers, but that's because they keep getting re-used. That doesn't mean one answer explaining those five mechanics can necessarily answer a question about the other card.
For an example, consider the common mechanic of creatures with a P/T of */*, where that's defined by cards in graveyards. How many cards do that? Not many more than 20, and most of them are subtly different to the rest in some way that's going to be critical to a question. And look! Nighthowler isn't even in that search, because it's subtly different in yet another way.
So, even if I replace a card name in a title with a description of that relevant mechanic, usually the question will still be uniquely about just one card. If a new question arrives about a card with similar mechanics, it often won't be a full duplicate of the previous one, even if we might go into detail on the same mechanics again. Generalising the title doesn't necessarily make it a good dupe candidate, in other words.
Generalising is often gainless
I could ask a question titled What about {thing} when I have Etherium Sculptor out?, or I could title it more generally with What about {thing} when I have a creature out that makes artifacts cost 1 less?, except there's very few cards like that and Etherium Sculptor is one of them. We're not likely to get duplicates on this.
Likewise, we could rename Does Progenitor Mimic create copies of itself even when it isn't a creature? to be more general. But what general title could we have? Something like: Can a creature which clones a creature then keeps creating copies of itself and refers to itself as a 'creature' in the description keep copying itself when it isn't a creature? That's sure more general, but there's still only one card this would even relate to.
As a recent concrete example, What happens when a creature with "Whenever a creature dies" dies simultaneously with multiple other creatures? was recently retitled from Does Marchesa, the Black Rose protect herself as well as others from board wipes that would kill her too?. Sure, we're revisiting the same mechanic again, and we're going to revisit them again another time, but this isn't actually likely to be a duplicate target because of the specific situation being asked about.
Let's just generalise where the generalisation is absolutely helpful.
So, this is overdoing it:
I think that the community needs to be more aggressive about editing the titles of questions that contain almost purely card names unless they are absolutely unable to be generalized.
But this might be more helpful:
... if the situation and mechanic are extremely general and can be safely very generalised.
Like here! We did that: When does Heroic trigger?
And here! I asked about the entire concept, rather than just Nemesis of Mortals: How does mana cost reduction interact with colored mana in a cost?
But let's not generalise just because we can. That doesn't make the site better.
