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I have a pet peeve. The annoyance in question is with "questions" like these:

(Note that I am not questioning the quality of the questions and they were the first four questions I came across when looking for examples.)

My pet peeve is that these questions do not specify a question in their titles. I wanted to hear your thoughts on editing questions like this to accurately reflect the question being asked.

My proposal is to edit "question" titles to be accurate and be questions. For example, these four would be edited to something like:

  • Is gold farming legal in any specific game?
  • What are some recommendations for fast expanding with Zerg?
  • How can you counter marines, marauders and tanks?
  • How do you find people to play co-op games?

What are your thoughts?

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  • With respect to your given examples, by the way, I would edit the first and the last but not the middle two.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Aug 19, 2010 at 20:00
  • if it was supposed to be in the form of a question, the field should be named question instead of title. semantics/usability. Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 17:48
  • @antony Humorously enough, that was actually one of the conclusions people came to in some Meta SO discussions: rename it to "Question". I don't agree, though, and find that having a title field is more flexible.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 18:14
  • Note that the FAQ does ask you to try and state it as a Jeopardy question. So I would rephrase all the given questions at least to be a real question, for example: How can I expand quickly with Zerg?
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 18:30
  • 2
    Possible duplicate of Question Titles that are not Questions but Titles
    – Joachim
    Commented Oct 11, 2019 at 12:07
  • There seems to be a contradiction between two of the top-voted answers here and the top-voted answer in the SE-wide Meta FAQ post: How do I write a good title? "Use proper grammar and write in question form." Commented Jul 27, 2023 at 3:52

3 Answers 3

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Some of what has been spoken of on the other Meta can be found in this poll, among many other posts.

I only suggest editing a title if the current title does not provide a concise point on the question. If it would be vague enough to be confusing as to what it meant, for example. But if the title is fine even if it isn't a literal question, I think it is fine to stay.

Advantages of not requiring the title to be a question:

  • It may serve the secondary purpose of attracting answerers better.
  • Adding interrogatives may be extraneous.
  • Seeing a page filled with "How do I" at the start of every question can be annoying for a user to parse.
  • Sometimes it is a lot shorter to stick with a quick statement than to formulate your question, if it is particularly complex.
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  • I agree. As long as the title reflects the issue it shouldn't have to be an actual question.
    – Kempeth
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 14:59
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As long as a question title accurately reflects the content of the question, I don't believe this should be enforced. As long as a question exists within the content, the title, in my opinion, should simply allow me to surmise what demographic could provide answers to the question and under what subject it falls.

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  • if it was supposed to be in the form of a question, the field should be named question instead of title. semantics/usability. Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 17:48
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There are 2 main purposes of the title of a question, as I see it. It needs to give a very brief synopsis of the body of the question, and it needs to get people's attention so that they pay the question attention. The attention bit is out of the realm of this question, however, so I'll stick to the other half.

In all of your examples, the first criterion has been met. Reading the title to these questions gives an idea as to what the question will be about. Adding the extra words that you suggested around the titles adds very little substance to the titles.

However, I also like things to look neat and tidy, and to have some semblance of standardization. If each question actually had a succinct question as its title, I feel like the main page would feel more complete. It would have a more professional look and feel. And even past that, honestly, sometimes it is easier to grasp the context of a question when actually phrased as a question.

I vote that we standardize questions to actually have question titles. It looks and feels better.

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  • I don't see any benefit from this proposal and only a lot of work. This is a QnA site by definition. Requiring all title to be formatted as such is redundant IMO.
    – Kempeth
    Commented Aug 20, 2010 at 15:04

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