Why the post titles?

January 29, 2013 3:58 PM

Is there a way to turn off the giant overwhelming post titles and return to the halcyon days of yore where titles only showed on the post's page?
posted by xmutex to Feature Requests at 3:58 PM (39 comments total)

See recently, yes. You can hide titles by setting the title font size to 0 if you like.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:00 PM on January 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Excellent, thanks.
posted by xmutex at 4:02 PM on January 29, 2013

i prefer them to be a couple sizes smaller than text size - you might try that before you turn them off completely.
posted by nadawi at 4:05 PM on January 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Thanks bro. Much brobliged.
posted by xmutex at 4:28 PM on January 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Much earlier.
posted by unliteral at 4:32 PM on January 29, 2013

So, about those post titles,
posted by herbplarfegan at 5:20 PM on January 29, 2013

They are awful and bad and wrong. On the inside.
posted by The Whelk at 5:24 PM on January 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Post titles turned me into a newt!
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:25 PM on January 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

I like them.
I always thought post titles were a useless thing, hanging out on the inside page after you had already clicked through. Why even bother having them?

Now they are right there above the post, telling me a little something about it.
And I can have them any size I want!
posted by SLC Mom at 5:28 PM on January 29, 2013 [12 favorites]

I liked it better in the old days when people bitched about how they had no idea what a post was about until they clicked a link, then someone would come along and give a lesson in browsers and say, "If you hover over the link you can see what it is," and then that person would say, "Doesn't work on my iPhone," and someone else would say, "Does too. All you have to do is...."

How are people going to learn the internet now?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:34 PM on January 29, 2013 [9 favorites]

xmutex: “Is there a way to turn off the giant overwhelming post titles and return to the halcyon days of yore where titles only showed on the post's page?”

One neat thing is that you can change the "giant overwhelming" text so it's the same size as the post text, which I really like.
posted by koeselitz at 5:44 PM on January 29, 2013

#FiftyGrandCatBike
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 5:44 PM on January 29, 2013 [3 favorites]

"I liked it better in the old days when people bitched about how they had no idea what a post was about until they clicked a link, then someone would come along and give a lesson in browsers and say, "If you hover over the link you can see what it is," and then that person would say, "Doesn't work on my iPhone," and someone else would say, "Does too. All you have to do is...."

How are people going to learn the internet now?"

Earlier tonight, my housemate wanted to show me some dresses that she bought online. She was looking at her order history, with the list of purchases. Except the purchases weren't clickable, despite her many attempts. And so I said, "just copy and paste that dress name in the search box." And she was like, "wut?" So I attempted to do it, but it's this possessed PC laptop with a demonic trackpad. So I was like, "Here, you do it; I can't figure this fucking thing out." But she didn't know what I wanted her to do. So we worked through how to select some text with the mouse. And then I showed her CTRL+C and CTRL+V. Then the dress magicalagically appeared! She was all, "WHOA!" Which I took to mean, "That just blew my mind." And I agreed, which meant, "Mine too."
posted by iamkimiam at 5:52 PM on January 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Kim, I am imagining that whole situation as basically a re-enactment of The Geefle and the Gonk. But I imagine a lot of clumsy but productive social interactions that way.

Also, Jerry Nelson narrating that skit sounds a lot like Ron Howard narrating Arrested Development, if you squint your ears a little.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:17 PM on January 29, 2013 [5 favorites]

So, nice dress?
posted by cjorgensen at 6:19 PM on January 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Alternatively, you can leave the Title font size alone and set the Body font size to 0. This gives you a much more efficient Metafilter reading experience.
posted by alms at 6:56 PM on January 29, 2013 [4 favorites]

Why stop there? I want everything hidden except the titles and the favorite counts.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 7:24 PM on January 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

I am imagining that whole situation as basically a re-enactment of The Geefle and the Gonk.

FTV: "once upon a time, on the planet of Snoo, there lived a Geefle..."

The planet so nice they named it twice! Sesame Street is corrupting our children.
posted by Lemurrhea at 7:57 PM on January 29, 2013

So was it cooperation or sharing?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:10 PM on January 29, 2013

It was Shirley.
posted by darksasami at 9:29 PM on January 29, 2013

Stop calling me Shirley.
posted by deborah at 9:59 PM on January 29, 2013

Speaking of which, what's with these "favorites"? It's not even the correct spelling.
posted by philip-random at 11:04 PM on January 29, 2013

Have you all learnt to use the interwebs yet?
posted by infini at 11:55 PM on January 29, 2013

Flavorite! Now with added flavorium!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:15 AM on January 30, 2013

Heh. Spelling 'favorites'. This has become a sort of academic existential crisis in my world. I'm writing a PhD dissertation about MetaFilter...more specifically about language variation in both text and speech, as used by MeFites. I'm an American living in the UK, and the dissertation is written in UK spelling conventions/style. Except for "favorites", which is sort of a new word anyway, which is sort of what I'm writing about as well. And because this one word is such a noticeable shibboleth both here and between US/UK cultures, I can't just let it go unaddressed. So I've got this somewhat ridiculous meta footnote at first mention, explaining my choice of spelling favorites as such, despite everything else with now more 'u's and with 's's instead of zeds/zees and on and on. But it took quite a lot of people and discussion and probably unnecessary thought into the wee hours to get here.

So yes, this too reminds me of Shirley.

Also, my mind is yet again blown; that cortex has Geefie and the Gonk in his repertoire of "oh yah, this reminds me of this obscure clip from Sesame Street...let me use the appropriate google search terms that I remember about this to find it for you."

The cortex is a thing of mystery.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:54 AM on January 30, 2013 [5 favorites]

The cortex is a thing of mystery.

I would like to petition for that to be the subtitle of your dissertation.
posted by infini at 3:08 AM on January 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'll add that to my ongoing list of possible dissertation taglines.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:12 AM on January 30, 2013

Sorry, what the hell was I thinking? There's no such thing as flavorium. It's flavonium, of course.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:53 AM on January 30, 2013

To attempt to answer the question, do you think SEO might have anything to do with this? Not that I'd mind but "everyone else is doing it" is not the answer just as it's not the answer to "why can't we edit for content?" /notangryjustasking
posted by lordaych at 5:11 AM on January 30, 2013

I love the post titles: they stalk the blue hills of mefiland like the fantastic aqueducts of some benign old empire. Let them never dwindle in my browser!
posted by Segundus at 5:55 AM on January 30, 2013

> /notangryjustasking

/notangrybotheringtoreadpreviousthreadsjustaskingwastingeveryone'stime

FTFY
posted by languagehat at 6:05 AM on January 30, 2013

very late to the bar syndrome.
posted by infini at 6:21 AM on January 30, 2013

The titles are awesome and I love them unironically.
posted by DWRoelands at 6:25 AM on January 30, 2013

I am imagining that whole situation as basically a re-enactment of The Geefle and the Gonk

Or most interactions between Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.
posted by fleacircus at 6:25 AM on January 30, 2013

While there are the prior threads, to be fair they are big meandering things, and the questions about titles will continue popping up from time to time.

I just noticed the FAQ page still pretty much reflects the pre-titled state of Metafilter too. For instance, in the entry for "How do I create the [more inside] jump when posting?"

On AskMe, the box called "your question" will be the part of the question that appears on the main page. This should be a short version of your question. The next box called "extended explanation" will be the [more inside] part of your question and can be as long as you want. Again, the words "more inside" will automatically be added to the end of your question. The "Headline/Title" box will create a title for your post that is only visible when people view Ask Metafilter via RSS. Please do not use this box to include information that is necessary to your question because people viewing your question on the web site will not see it on the main Ask MetaFilter page, they will only see it when they view the question on its own page.

At some point that should probably be fixed.
posted by Drastic at 6:27 AM on January 30, 2013

I'm very pro sharing, but I've always had to resist yelling "drop the damn nectarine into your mouth you stupid Geefle" every-time I've seen that clip.
posted by edgeways at 8:25 AM on January 30, 2013

languagehat:/notangrybotheringtoreadpreviousthreadsjustaskingwastingeveryone'stime

FTFY"

Thank you for that insightful demonstration.
posted by Big_B at 8:57 AM on January 30, 2013

speaking of previous threads
posted by exogenous at 12:02 PM on January 30, 2013

I just noticed the FAQ page still pretty much reflects the pre-titled state of Metafilter too.

I just updated that entry; thanks for pointing it out.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:26 AM on February 3, 2013