Pony: Title guidelines on the 'Post a New Question' page

May 10, 2006 2:13 PM

Why not explain on the AskMe "Post a New Question" page that the Headline/Title will *not* show up on the main page? I have seen lots of questions in the past where the Headline/Title contains the question and the question text lacks context and looks odd on its own. Example. I think a few clarifying words about how visitors will not see the Headline/Title when browsing AskMe's main pages will help people word their questions more appropriately.
posted by apple scruff to Feature Requests at 2:13 PM (17 comments total)

How do people still make this mistake? The title is all the way at the end of the page. To think it would go in context before the main text is baffling.
posted by smackfu at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2006

I think for people who don't use RSS at all, the idea of a title may still be a bit more confusing. On many blogs, the title is the thing you see first. Not that mathowie doesn't explain it pretty well, but we know that people still get it wrong. I fix one of these once or twice a week.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:27 PM on May 10, 2006

It's at the bottom of the page purposely, because when it was at the top this happened several times a day. The text spells out that they must put their question in the first field.

Honestly, I've been tweaking that page for the past six months trying to prevent this and a few get through each week with no question at all in the first form field.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:37 PM on May 10, 2006

Why not just have:

Question: [ ] (limited to say 255 char)
Details: [ ] unlimited.

Use the question field for the RSS title, and display it on the main askMe page. Details would go in the more inside. No more, no less.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:41 PM on May 10, 2006

I'm with blue_beetle. I remember the first time I asked a question, getting down to the title field and wondering why the question wasn't the same as the title. I expect the restraint of fitting the question into the small space of the title would also improve quality by forcing askers to think more about what exactly their question is.
posted by scottreynen at 2:58 PM on May 10, 2006

blue_beetle and scottyreynen, I tried that at first, and quickly found that people couldn't get to the point in 255 characters. It was quickly scrapped for something with a bit more leeway.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:21 PM on May 10, 2006

I tried that at first, and quickly found that people couldn't get to the point in 255 characters.

Oh. What did people do when they couldn't get to the point? Put half the question in the question field and the other half in the details? Complain about it on MeTa?
posted by scottreynen at 3:33 PM on May 10, 2006

title = left$(question,255) should do the trick.

because, as we all know, metafilter is written in gw-basic
posted by Saucy Intruder at 3:56 PM on May 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

More important is to tell people to ask the question on the front page, not in the more inside part.
posted by fire&wings at 4:08 PM on May 10, 2006

I think people get confused by the title showing up on the question page in preview and think it'll look that way on AskMe's front page. Maybe removing the title from the question preview page will make it clearer. Calling it something like "RSS tracking summary" instead of title might also help.
posted by TimeFactor at 4:11 PM on May 10, 2006

I was about to start a thread on this exact same topic. What you need it two previews on the preview page - one showing excatly what it will look like on the front page, and one showing how it looks within the thread. The current page only shows the latter.
posted by cillit bang at 5:13 PM on May 10, 2006

I could just add the title in a much smaller font to the front page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:30 PM on May 10, 2006

Or not show the title in the text of the (question or front) page at all. The title's necessary for RSS and useful in the browser's titlebar but does it serve any purpose elsewhere? Often (usually?) the title and the question are the same or essentially so. It usually ends up looking dumb on the question page (e.g., and that's just a random example, not a criticism of the poster). The title doesn't really serve a purpose there and seems to be causing problems for AskMe's front page. Why not scrap it?
posted by TimeFactor at 6:10 PM on May 10, 2006

I'm not scraping titles because the RSS feeds are terrible without them. People can't get to the point in 255 characters for a question field and I think forcing it will lose some of the charm.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:03 PM on May 10, 2006

I think applescruff's original solution would work fine:

I think a few clarifying words about how visitors will not see the Headline/Title when browsing AskMe's main pages will help people word their questions more appropriately.

I can't check the posting page for a few days, but if there's not something like that, there probably should be. It's simple to add and just might be enough to take the error rate down to one a week.

mathowie: I could just add the title in a much smaller font to the front page.

Seems like that would just mess with the simplicity of AskMe's look in ugly and redundant ways, especially since it's very common for title and question to duplicate or closely mimic one another. Why present the same information twice on the front page?

TimeFactor's solution is interesting, too, but in the preview you might consider showing the title *below* the question, so folks can check spelling, etc, but have less chance of mistaking the title for something that will *precede* the question on the front page.
posted by mediareport at 8:11 PM on May 10, 2006

I wasn't clear. I meant only scrapping titles in the text of the question page.
posted by TimeFactor at 8:11 PM on May 10, 2006

And I was unclear again.

Prompt for a title on the "ask a question" page. Use the supplied title for RSS feeds and for the page title of the question page. Don't use the title in the text of the question page (or preview for the question page) or on the front page.
posted by TimeFactor at 8:15 PM on May 10, 2006