Dano,
I have selected "Only Moderators Can Create Hashtags".
...
Unfortunately for those of us who remember farther back than
computers, what this does is effectively disallow the use of a pound
symbol in a title.
That is a concern of mine as well. Our friend the octothorp has many other names and uses.
Which is one reason to take a laissaiz faire approach to the hashtags - if you're not planning to use them for anything particular then it doesn't much matter that the members may incidentally create useless ones while using the number sign for a different purpose.
It appears that technology is eliminating a written character that we
used, instead of finding a solution that didn't limit what a poster
might wish to write.
Sadly, that's usually the case where a marker is needed to alter the meaning of what follows. Fortunately this marker is "mostly harmless" in the sense that most non-hashtag uses will not affect the way the message posts. It would be a (hopefully) rare case that a member accidentally combines the number sign with a word that a moderator has designated as a hashtag with special features.
I'm trying to avoid suggesting that there be a new group setting which turns off hashtag processing altogether. That would be another way to allow the number sign to appear freely in message subjects. But it is a way that cuts off the possibility of mixed usage (which a human can distinguish by context).
An alternate approach is to have a modifying choice to the "Only Moderators Can Create Hashtags" setting: whether the attempt causes the message to be rejected (the default, as it is now), moderated, or accepted. And in either of the latter two cases no entry is created in the hashtag list for the member's incidental use of the number sign. That again leaves it to humans to understand by context (or explanation) why that usage did not create a hashtag.
Shal
Shal Farley