What should our question title guidelines be?

Question

Mike Schinkel made an excellent point on a question of mine recently regarding its wording. It didn't accurately describe the exact nature of the question, and rewording it has increased its value.

I've noticed this becoming more and more of a problem on stackoverflow recently, and it's something I'd like the WA community to be aware of. So, can we come up with some guidelines on the following:

1. Questions vs. statements - IMO, wherever possible, titles should actually be questions including a question mark at the end!
2. Moderation - are we generally agreed that moderators should be regularly cleaning up question titles? It would be nice if we weren't too precious about this and accepted, as a community, title edits from anyone with the permission to do so.
3. Anything else?

There are several examples of poorly worded questions that I can currently see, including:

• Permalink Problems
• 5 blogs on one Wordpress site
• Cleanup uploads folder, Media Library db structure
• Wordpress stats API key
• ...

IMO, if WA is to succeed as a wiki, this is a vital consideration.

Answer 1

I propose that moderators (and others with the ability) should be encouraged to clean up question titles when possible.

Answer 2

Wherever possible, question titles should actually be questions, including a trailing question mark.

Answer 3

Maybe we should just experiment with it? Here are the questions currently on the front page. If you can think of a better title, add it after the original one (double space at the end of the line inserts a line break). Multiple suggestions can be discussed in the comments.

• What steps can I take to optimize wordpress in regard to server load
  How to optimize server load?
• Depth > 2 possible with multisite?
• Can I use a number for a post/page slug?
• Image still linked as attachment to page even though it has been deleted
  How do I completely remove an image from its associated post?
• Natural URL Design and static front page
• How do I save metadata for a specific custom post type only?
• How can we make managing lots of pages in WordPress Admin better?
• How to Link External jQuery/Javascript files with WordPress
• Experiences with adding Nonces to the comment form
• How do I get the size of an attachment file?
• Best-of-Breed features of a high-end WordPress web host?
• Modifying the comments section through a plugin regardless of theme
• Cleanup uploads folder, Media Library db structure
• Will Flutter work with Wordpress 3.0?
• How to maintain W3C standards compliance of a theme
• Optimizing a Proximity-based Store Location Search on a Plain-Vanilla Web Host?
• How to eliminate weird 404 errors in wp-admin?
• Are there any free and open source alternatives to Thesis theme
• How do I make the header on the Twenty Ten theme less tall?
• OpenID for WordPress 3.x?
• Tips for using WordPress as a CMS?
• How can I create create and use a custom template for custom post types in the Genesis theme framework?
• Permalink Problems
• Building useful features into your theme
• Delete Wordpress plugin Repository
• Is there a way to get N number of WYSIWYG editors in a custom post type?
• Am I allowed to license my Wordpress theme under the aGPL
• What issues would you face if you use Nginx
• 5 blogs on one WordPress site
  What is the best way to have multiple blogs on one site?
• Creative uses of WordPress

Answer 4

I think we can best encourage good titles by actively moderating poor titles, leaving a comment when a title is modified to encourage better titles in the future, and exercising our downvotes on questions that are so poor they cannot be fixed by anyone but the asker. It's not optimal when a question's only response is meta (ie. about the title rather than the topic) but the worst questions can never be answered due to lack of clarity or background.

A "poor" title would be one that does not accurately summarize the question, and I think all your examples fit this description.

Related: ESR's How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.

Answer 5

I've been editing some titles with the plan to come here to ask this same question so glad so many beat me to it!

Preface:

My current understanding is we are collaboratively curating great answers to the list of all the relevant questions related WordPress. The idea being that if someone has a reasonably question about WordPress that ideally we should a somewhat authoritative and complete answer here. Is everyone in agreement with this?

With that in mind here are my current evolving thoughts about titles. I think:

1. We should edit the (typically vague) titles after we've identified what the actual question really is.

2. We should edit titles to be what thing we think someone will most likely search via Google or other search engines when they have the same or a similar problem.

3. We should definitely end with a question mark except in the infrequent cases where it should obviously not be the case.

4. Questions should include the word "WordPress" because that is how they will be naturally asked and thus will be more recognized by users scanning the site and will more likely match when someone searches for same via Google, etc.

5. We should proper case most words in the title except for words like "to", "the", "and", "with", "if", etc. This will make them stand out as titles and this is a grammar best practice anyway. Of course we should probably come up with our own rules for this.

Now I'm on the fence with "How do I.." as a prefix. Cons are that it makes the titles longer and make it harder to differentiate a list of questions on the page simply by scanning them. Pros to include "How do I..." are that it would more likely match a Google search where someone searches "How do I xxx." Not sure where to go with this...

As a side I think this site will be more successful with less questions that are better managed and maintained than a bunch of one-of obscure questions with two or three answers each a couple lines long.

Agreed?

Answer 6

Question titles should never need to include the word "Wordpress"