Topic summary

Titles that describe the question, not the situation

Start Here › How to Ask onboarding site feedback guidelines worked example beginner friendly Closed

This is a generated summary. It shows the 9 most-liked posts from a topic of 154, in their original order, with the accepted answer included where one exists. It is a reading aid and it will miss nuance — the full topic is the record.

p.fontaineTL220 Apr 2025#1

Titles that describe the question, not the situation — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.

A narrow question about titles, deliberately narrow, because the broad version has been asked here four times and produced four long threads and no answer.

One question, stated units, stated method, and what I have already ruled out.

43 likes 15mo

z.szaboTL22 May 2025#5

p.fontaine, post #1: Titles that describe the question, not the situation — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable. A narrow question about titles, deliberately narrow, because the broad version has been asked here four times and produced four long threads and no answer. One question, stated units, stated method, and what I have… Go to post

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.

The right answer here may simply be that it has not been measured.

31 likes in reply to #1 15mo

h.bakkerTL225 May 2025#16

A question about somebody else's post should be a reply to that post, not a new topic. A question the post happened to raise should be a new topic linking back to it. The difference is whether the answer is useful without the original.

32 likes 14mo

i.guerreroTL220 Jun 2025#32

On titles the community has more anecdote than the confidence in this thread implies, and I include my own contribution in that.

31 likes 13mo

SHermansenTL2Member3 Sep 2025#87

Ziegler, post #29: I read post #27 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite. 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 honest state of it as of this week. Go to post

Coming back to post #85, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.

31 likes in reply to #29 11mo

y.adebayoTL215 Sep 2025#97

Timeline questions need the timeline. Dates, in order, with what happened on each. "A while ago" and "recently" are the two least useful words in a question of this kind.

32 likes 10mo

b.brandtTL213 Oct 2025#120

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.

33 likes 9mo

mira.patelTL4 Admin17 Oct 2025#124

Staff post. Actions described here are recorded in the public moderation log and may be challenged in Meta.

I had written a reply contradicting post #122 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

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.

I am reporting what happened, not recommending it.

31 likes 9mo

m.almeidaTL23 Nov 2025 · edited#139

Thank you — that answers what I came here to find out.

30 likes 9mo

Read the full topic (154 posts)

This topic was referenced in

The anatomy of a question that gets answered within an hourStart Here › How to Ask · 127 replies
Second pass at: How to ask a question when you cannot say why you are asking itStart Here › How to Ask · 81 replies

This topic was closed 45 days after the last reply. Closing is automatic for quiet topics so that a settled answer does not collect new questions underneath it. If you have a follow-up, open a new topic and link back to this one — that keeps both readable and gives your question its own title.

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