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I'm noticing A LOT of short phrases in the main title that aren't actually specific questions. In order to attract the answers we want, I think we should be encouraging people to write specific questions in the main title. It's tempting to directly edit the question title, but I've been adding comments to encourage good question-asking.

Maybe we need to include more references to the Stack Overflow "How do I ask a good question?" page.

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  • $\begingroup$ Agreed, and this also applies to big questions that are either lacking context, or should be broken down into multiple specific questions. But perhaps that is another topic $\endgroup$
    – Shannon
    Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 23:55
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    $\begingroup$ Since your question seems to be primarily about the post title, here's a relevant FAQ on MSE: How do I write a good title? $\endgroup$
    – V2Blast Staff
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 17:38

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Here's some verbage to address these types of questions:

Please edit the main title so it is a specific question. As it stands, your title is a short phrase that doesn't let readers know what information you're looking for. See guide for: "How do I ask a good question"

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    $\begingroup$ I like this. Question: should this be paired with a downvote to encourage the author to edit? Is that too harsh? $\endgroup$
    – Shannon
    Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 23:56
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    $\begingroup$ Downvote might discourage new users - too much too soon? $\endgroup$
    – Thejasvi
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 7:56
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Echo the feeling here too. I'm also wondering if we can 'lead by example'. This allows a direct 'learning by seeing', rather than waiting and then getting somewhat ambiguous results.

Basically wherever possible, we take action by editing the question and also adding a comment saying the question has been edited for more context?

Riffing off @ASimonis:

The main title has been edited to increase specificity. As it stood, your title was a short phrase that didn't let readers know what information was needed. Please edit further if the current state of the question doesn't capture what was intended. See guide for: "How do I ask a good question"

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  • $\begingroup$ Is the asker noticed when someone edit their question? I tried to find this answer on meta.stackexchange, but didnot succeed. If they are noticed, maybe we don't need to comment as well about the edit? $\endgroup$
    – Noil
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 10:14
  • $\begingroup$ Yes. I received a notice in my inbox when someone edited my post. $\endgroup$
    – ASimonis
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 16:32
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    $\begingroup$ We can include this in the edit summary and it won't show up as an actual comment $\endgroup$
    – ASimonis
    Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 16:37
  • $\begingroup$ Do you know if the edit summary gets forwarded on to the person when they are alerted to the edit, or is it just stored with the revisions of the question? $\endgroup$
    – selene
    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 20:30
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The title should do a good job of summarizing the main question. It shouldn't just be a few keywords or just the overall topic you're asking about (e.g. "timestamps"); rather, anyone reading the title should be able to get a sense of the overall question you're asking.

Sometimes, a clearer title may be shorter than an overly long and detailed one. That said, ideally you should be able to write a title that's both descriptive and clear. It doesn't necessarily need to be phrased as a complete sentence/question, but I personally prefer titles to be phrased as questions whenever possible (i.e. unless it makes the title really unwieldy or unclear).

If you see a question by another user with a vague or unclear title, feel free to edit the post to improve it. (That said, you should generally avoid very minor edits; if you're editing a post, you should try to improve the post as much as possible, fixing all errors you see.)

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I agree and have noticed that as well. Do you have a bit of standardized text you've been putting in the comments? You could share that here and maybe we can plan to use that in a "moderating" context to try to encourage more complete titles.

EDIT: For this question on Raven Pro/Raven Lite I just went ahead and edited the title directly. Then added a comment explaining why with a link to the How do I write a good title? MSE post.

I opted to do this because this was a very new user (11 reputation points) so I didn't want to be discouraging with a downvote, but wanted to "show through action" like @Thejasvi suggested and to try to make the change as quickly as possible.

Here is the text I used (the brackets allow the link to be clickable)

I edited the title of your question a bit to make it more detailed/specific and better fit the SE Q/A format. I hope to have maintained the essence of your question, but if not, please comment here or edit back. For more info see: [How do I write a good title?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10647/how-do-i-write-a-good-title)
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