Can Posts Have Titles?

November 7, 2002 4:30 PM

A while back there was a discussion about the non-informative RSS/RDF/XML feed titles, due to the fact that metafilter/metatalk threads don't have 'titles' as such. Could we perhaps have a an extra field in the 'post an FPP' form marked 'Post title' or something that was less than some arbitrary limit of characters long and could be used for things like the feeds, and more importantly (and the reason I'm requesting this) for page titles.
I tend to open all the links I want to read in one go. When I click on the "(n new)" link I don't go to the top of the story, and so when I get to the page after reading other FPPs, I don't know what this story's about anymore, and can't glance at the document title for a hint of the general subject as with many sites.
posted by fvw to Feature Requests at 4:30 PM (7 comments total)

in the past, I didn't want to further clutter up the posting page by forcing a new field on users, but given the runaway popularity of RSS, I'm thinking it's time to start including titles for all new posts, and asking people posting to create concise headlines to be used in title tags and RSS titles.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:01 PM on November 7, 2002

Another and possibly more frustrating event that gets one hoping for the titles is when threads are re-linked - seeing the thread number doesn't poke my memory like a simple title does. I'd be glad to see this feature!
posted by whatzit at 6:15 PM on November 7, 2002

asking people posting to create concise headlines to be used in title tags and RSS titles

Cool! This little exercise may actually help us make our posts more concise too.

An ignoramus's question: will it also make searching easier too?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:30 PM on November 7, 2002

Searching with Google will probably be easier yet (if people will really post concise headlines), because Google and search engines attach more value to the title of a page than the body text.
posted by roel at 8:17 AM on November 8, 2002

I added titles to posts now, and enabled it on the RSS feeds and title tags of comment pages.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:51 PM on November 12, 2002

Wicked, thanks again and again matt.
posted by walrus at 4:53 PM on November 12, 2002

I'm having a hard time getting my head around this RSS/RDF/XML stuff. Can anyone point me at an interesting use of the MetaFilter feed?
posted by timeistight at 5:10 PM on November 12, 2002