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Codidact Meta is the meta-discussion site for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.

Comments on Is S.E. website layout more clear cut and user friendly?

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Is S.E. website layout more clear cut and user friendly? [closed]

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Closed as not constructive by msh210‭ on Nov 12, 2020 at 09:42

This question cannot be answered in a way that is helpful to anyone. It's not possible to learn something from possible answers, except for the solution for the specific problem of the asker.

This question was closed; new answers can no longer be added. Users with the reopen privilege may vote to reopen this question if it has been improved or closed incorrectly.

No offense! I want to make Codidact better and friendlier than SE! I don't know why — I don't design website or user experience — but SE's websites looks better and makes my eyes and eyesight easier? No, there's no familiarity bias or heuristic.

Example 1 — SE forces you to write title of post, then body. This makes sense because title tops body. But Codidact forces you to write body first, then title. Counter intuitive?

Example 2 — The CC BY-SA 4.0 distracts! Do we have to see it every post? It's irrelevant to substance of post.

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General comments (1 comment)
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Example 1 — SE forces you to write title of post, then body. This makes sense because title tops body. But Codidact forces you to write body first, then title. Counter intuitive?

While perhaps counterintuitive from a design perspective, it makes sense from a writing perspective. It's common advice that you should always choose a title[1] last - whether it be writing a novel, an essay, or in this case, a question.

For a more in-depth reasoning, see the discussion on Why does the title come after the body when writing a question?, especially Monica's and pnut's answers. I'll quote some relevant portions here.

Springer has advice about Titles (though the context is scientific publications rather than Q&A):

The title of your manuscript is usually the first introduction readers have to your published work. Therefore, you must select a title that grabs attention, accurately describes the contents of your manuscript, and makes people want to read further.

It does seem likely to me to be easier to describe content accurately after such content has been written, not before. A scaled up analogy might help: "What describes a ship better, the plans sent to the yard by the naval architect, or the 'as built' drawings?".

— pnuts

On other sites I've seen a lot of bad titles, ones that didn't match the question that came out at the end of the question body, and I think that's because the mere act of writing a question can change what you thought you were asking as you rubber-duck your problem.

— Monica Cellio‭

There's also this comment on Should the post title come before the body?.

This has come up a few times. I asked for it to come after the body because I've seen a lot of questions where the title doesn't match what the asker ended up asking about by the end of the body, but maybe we should instead just give newer posters a "please check your title again" reminder? — Monica Cellio‭


  1. and even subheadings. ↩︎

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General comments (5 comments)
General comments
Olin Lathrop‭ wrote about 4 years ago

This is a very nannyish attitude, and just not how most people's thought process works when writing a post.

Alexei‭ wrote about 4 years ago

I agree with OlinLathrop on this one. However, one can easily get used to Codidact as well. The first action is to jump and write a title. There is nothing that prevents me to change it later if I realize it does not fit the content.

Trilarion‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

Title after body is also the one thing that irritated me most when starting here. One can get used to it, but most people probably expect title above body because that most closely resembles the final order. Often enough I first write a preliminary title, then the body and finally return to the title and adapt it. I think this approach is even better than writing the title only after the body. I'm actually not sure where the title input field should really be located but the order used here is definitely a bit untypical, I'd say.

Moshi‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

Trilarion‭

Often enough I first write a preliminary title, then the body and finally return to the title and adapt it.

That's actually the kind of thing that we wanted to avoid users doing. As you say, even you go back to the title to adapt it once you write the body; this is just the software reminding you to do so.

On the other hand, I know that the design isn't the best. We've considered other options such as moving the title and other secondary information to another page, e.g. you write the body, hit next, then fill in the title and tags. Would that be less jarring to you?

Trilarion‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

I can only say that the chosen layout here is unexpected. My approach to writing questions is a bit iterative, i.e. I keep coming back to title and body and iteratively improve them until I'm satisfied. I need a temporary title at the beginning because that is in my mind when clicking the Ask question button, but I also need to revise it later on. Also the title will end up above the question anyway. So having it above the question body would kind of put input fields where output will be present later, a nice correspondence. A two step process where I'm reminded to look over my question and check the title before finally posting the question, might be good.