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There are a lot of questions titles here that looks more as the title of a story than an actual question, while just putting the question in the title shows directly to people scrolling what the trouble is about.

For example right now we have:

An introvert's dilemma

Meal Premiums in California

Should we edit those kind of titles to show directly the question asked by the user?

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  • Yes, but edit them to make them more dramatic. Include bolding and see if there is a way to reactivate the old HTML tag of <blink>
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Jul 28, 2017 at 13:44
  • @RichardU Might even add a dramatic piano background
    – sh5164
    Jul 28, 2017 at 13:46
  • 1
    You should probably distinguish between a bad title and a good title that captures the topic of the question but just doesn't have a question mark in it. While it's true that questions are typically clearer when there's a clear core question that can do double duty as the title, that's not always the case. The current basic (and unwritten?) guideline "give your question a good / clear / concise title" still seems sufficient to me.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Jul 28, 2017 at 15:11
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    By "automatically" I assume you mean "manually"... If not, you may want to propose a detailed programmatic solution.
    – Bernhard Barker
    Jul 30, 2017 at 22:50
  • @Dukeling I did mean manually, yet coding a script that could make clearer titles would be awesome (like parsing the question to check if there is a bold question and put it as a title maybe, but I guess that would make more trouble than help here)
    – sh5164
    Jul 31, 2017 at 8:59
  • @Dukeling I'd love to see the AlGorithm for that, or even the TipperGorithm
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Jul 31, 2017 at 17:57
  • @RichardU Could be funny but we would have to define which questions should be modified and how to modify them to make them clearer automatically, maybe some machine learning but I don't have that much ideas right now
    – sh5164
    Jul 31, 2017 at 18:00
  • @sh5164 a friend of mine once filtered his website to automatically censor Pokémon names. so if you typed one in it would just censor it like this ##### He REALLY hated Pokémon
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Jul 31, 2017 at 18:07
  • @RichardU That's nice but also easy to do because you have all the name of the pokemon, we don't have a finite list of bad titles though.
    – sh5164
    Aug 1, 2017 at 7:05
  • @sh5164 we could flag for the phrases "Should I" and "My boss won't", as well as a few others.
    – Old_Lamplighter
    Aug 1, 2017 at 12:35
  • @RichardU That's indeed a nice start !
    – sh5164
    Aug 1, 2017 at 12:36

3 Answers 3

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As is usually the case with a bad title, the questions are really not well crafted for SE. So while yes they should probably be re-titled I am one that is against just re-titling because you do not like the title. But if the title is misleading or if you have other fixes for the question then certainly making the title more reflective of what is being asked is definitely appropriate.

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I'd say yes, go for it.

We want titles to reflect the content of the question and also be useful in understanding exactly what you will read there. I think you're above the rep level that needs edits to be approved, so if you see something like this that you think could be improved, go ahead and change it.

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Yes, you should always edit question titles, because that is an excellent method to catch what I call "question smell". The question title should usually be a succinct summary of the description. If we find it difficult to provide such a summary, it usually means that either the question is unclear or that it has too many "questions" bundled into one.

While having the title consist of one single question is ideal, it is not always necessary that the title should have a single sentence ending in a question mark. The following forms are also ok, provided they describe the issue clearly:

  • My situation is X. How should I do Y?
  • Doing Y in situation X.

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