Posting this under the heading it deserves: Titles that describe the question, not the situation — what changed since Everything below is what sits behind that.
What changes if the standard account of Titles is wrong? I ask because I have been treating it as settled and I noticed this week that I could not say why.
Working through the consequences rather than the evidence, since others here are better placed on the evidence.
Genuine question rather than a rhetorical one: has anyone here actually observed Titles, as opposed to read about it? The thread is long and I cannot tell.
Speaking as somebody who asked badly last month and got a polite request for four missing details: writing the question properly the first time takes ten minutes and saves two days. Learn from me.
I would call that likely rather than established.
"Has anyone had this happen" gets you anecdotes. "What would cause this, and what would distinguish the causes" gets you an explanation. The second question is almost always the one you wanted.
Correct me on the arithmetic if it is wrong; I would rather know.
Asking a follow-up: new topic or reply in the old one? If the answer depends on the previous post, reply. If it is a question that makes sense without the previous post, new topic. The second gets faster answers.
Nobody minds being asked to explain a term. The people who use them most are the quickest to define them, and a question that stops to ask is usually a question that gets a better answer.
I would not lead a decision with this, but I would not ignore it either.
If someone has run Titles properly I would rather read that than my own reconstruction of it. Posting mine only because the thread has gone quiet.
I read post #6 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Do not apologise in the first line. It costs you the space where the question should be, and nobody here thinks a question is an imposition.
For what it is worth, the same held on the two occasions I checked.
What I can speak to on Titles is narrow, so I will keep it narrow rather than generalising from it. Beyond that boundary I do not know.
I had written a reply contradicting post #6 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Chromatogram questions: describe the method first. Column type, gradient, wavelength, detection method. Everything else follows from method. A chromatogram without method is a number without context.
That is the shape of it. The detail is where I would expect to be corrected.
Taking post #9 at face value and following it one step further.
Offering a way to settle Titles rather than another opinion about it. Two measurements, taken the same way, a fortnight apart. If the difference is within the noise, the question was not answerable at this precision.
The specific question in the title is more useful than you might think. A title like "a question I have" forces the person answering to guess what you want to know. A title with the actual question gets you an answer in two hours instead of two days.
I am not the right person to answer the follow-up to this.
Avoid "any advice?" at the end. It is so generic that people do not know which part of the post it refers to. Pick the specific part and ask that specific question instead.
Worth separating two things that post #13 runs together.
If the answer you got does not fit your case, say which part does not fit rather than restating the question. Otherwise the next reply is the same as the last one.
I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this.
Context that matters: compound, how long in, current dose, relevant history. Context that does not matter: how you feel, your hopes for the outcome, your medical history beyond what affects this specific question. The first set gets you answered. The second set makes the reply longer without making it better.
Post #17 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Where the Titles discussion usually stalls is that nobody wants to say "I do not know" and everyone is willing to say "it varies". Those are the same sentence with different clothes on.
Quantities without units are the single commonest reason a question sits unanswered. "Two and a half" is not a dose, a volume or a concentration until you say which.
That is what the documentation says. What happens in practice is usually close.
Staff note on titles, since it comes up. We retitle topics fairly often, always leaving the original in the first post and always logging it. It is not a criticism of the wording — it is that a title is how somebody finds this in eighteen months.
Questions you cannot explain: "I cannot say why I am asking this, but is this compound stable at room temperature?" is more productive than no question at all. People here know that some questions cannot be asked in public and they will work with that constraint.
I had written a reply contradicting post #20 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
The reason Titles is hard to answer is that the obvious measurement and the relevant quantity are not the same thing, and substituting one for the other is silent.
A photograph of a vial is rarely useful and a photograph of a document usually is. Redact the identifiers before you post either.
Genuinely open to being wrong about this one.
It is fine to say you cannot explain why you are asking. Nobody will press, and the technical part of the question can usually be answered without the context.
The part I am sure of is shorter than the part I have written.
Post #26 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Adding what did not work for me on Titles, since the failures never get written up and they are half the useful information.
Seconded. It reads as careful rather than confident, which is the right register.
Everything in post #28 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
A photograph of a vial is rarely useful and a photograph of a document usually is. Redact the identifiers before you post either.
I would rather say I do not know than round it up to an answer.