Ironically Non-Descriptive

February 14, 2007 7:21 AM

A thread in which someone who browses AskMe via RSS, annoyed by people's tendency to post inadequately descriptive "Headline/Title"s, but aware that this has been discussed before, illustrates his displeasure by composing alternative questions to fit some recent titles, in an attempt to encourage others to submit titles that better describe their questions.
posted by staggernation to Etiquette/Policy at 7:21 AM (19 comments total)

chewy carrot fries? no thanks

I have this one co-worker who keeps making me eat these disgusting chewy carrot fries. I don't know whether she makes or buys them but she brings them to work in a little ziploc bag every day and is like, "Hey, dude, chewy carrot fries?" And then stands there with a grin on her face waiting for me to eat one. How do I start turning the things down without offending her?

Ring

...around the collar. Has anyone successfully gotten this stuff out? It's a beige cotton button-down shirt from Eddie Bauer, if that helps.

Buffett quotes

There's this one song where Jimmy Buffett sings, "Wasted away again in..." and then some sort of made-up placename, then sings about... not sure, but I feel like, maybe, salt? Is anyone familiar with these lyrics? It's driving me crazy! And while we're on the subject, what is that song about "hot dogs in paradise" or something?

"Can I borrow your pen...?"

"Can I please borrow your pen? Mine is out of ink, and I really need to write something down! One that's good for writing quotation marks would be ideal, because I put everything in quotation marks. You can contact me at the address in my profile to make arrangements for the pen-borrowing. Thanks!"

Help me stop sitting on the floor outside the Admiral's Club checking my email.

I have a terrible fear of flying, so I thought it would be good to acclimate myself to the airport by hanging out there a lot. But now I'd like to take the next step. How can I get over my phobia?

Silent WInd

WHy don't my farts make more noise?
posted by staggernation at 7:23 AM on February 14, 2007

I admire the optimism of someone who realizes a subject has been brought up before on metatalk with absolutely no success, and yet posts the same complaint again.

The fact is, as it's been spelled out in all of those other threads demanding better thread titles, is that there's no way to regulate what people put in that field.

But keep fighting the good fight, you crazy diamond.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:35 AM on February 14, 2007

I don't read via RSS, so I can't identify with your plight, but I think your callout method is very clever.
posted by amyms at 7:36 AM on February 14, 2007

Isn't this a failure of your RSS reader? The feed has the whole question.
posted by smackfu at 7:48 AM on February 14, 2007

If you don't read by RSS, it does not take a lack of good intentions, or a surfeit of idiocy, to fail to use the Title field in a way that would help people who do.
posted by OmieWise at 7:49 AM on February 14, 2007

Does your RSS reader really not have a mode like this so you can see some of the body?
posted by cillit bang at 7:53 AM on February 14, 2007

is that what the second title line is for? Huh.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 7:57 AM on February 14, 2007

I don't read by RSS. I suspect that if I did read by RSS, I would only use RSS to read those sites that are regularly readable and non-annoying when read by RSS. Otherwise I'd get annoyed. If I persisted in reading sites that are sometimes annoying to read by RSS, I don't think, however, I would try to solve my problem by imposing on anyone else.
posted by mzurer at 8:07 AM on February 14, 2007

You might think before laying on that much snark, I'd check and see who the OP was, just in case I might actually know them personally.

Hi Kev! Can I get you a coffee?
posted by mzurer at 8:14 AM on February 14, 2007

Mike! I always wondered if that was you on here. Drop me a line sometime...
posted by staggernation at 8:20 AM on February 14, 2007

So wait, To Kill a Mockingbird isn't about hunting?
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 8:39 AM on February 14, 2007

Homer Simpson beat you to that one.
posted by staggernation at 8:46 AM on February 14, 2007

Without agreeing or disagreeing or doing anything committal at all, since I don't do the RSS feed, let me just say that your callout was quite clever. You made me laugh.
posted by routergirl at 10:47 AM on February 14, 2007

I too have long been annoyed by this frequent mis-use of the "title" field. Makes it hard to keep up with all these vital questions, and I'm afraid that someday I might miss one. Some small changes to the question form might help, like renaming the field from "headline" to "subject", or "question summary" or something. And putting "Please boil your question down to a single sentence" in big blinking block letters.
posted by sfenders at 12:14 PM on February 14, 2007

I'm much more annoyed by the posters who put some essential piece of information in the title field without including it in the body of the question. We hates it, my precioussssss.....
posted by jdroth at 12:53 PM on February 14, 2007

...but non-descriptive titles suck too.
posted by jdroth at 12:54 PM on February 14, 2007

Agreed - is there any way to make the posting page more descriptive? I like the idea of changing the field name to "Summary" rather than "Title"
posted by blag at 1:42 PM on February 14, 2007

Lets talk about the posters that come up with yet another cutesy way to incorporate the [more inside] text into their post, thereby making the actual question page somewhat disjointed to read..

Lil' bit irritating to this guy.
posted by davey_darling at 2:34 PM on February 14, 2007

Oooh. I hate the cutesy bit with the [more inside].
posted by Alt F4 at 3:10 PM on February 14, 2007