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Comments on Should the post title come before the body?

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Should the post title come before the body?

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Should the post title come before the body?

When starting a new post, the first thing that comes to my mind is the topic of the post. In that case I usually first jot down a draft title and then start working on the body of the post. I'll usually come back to the title just to make sure it still makes sense.

I think it's a bit confusing that the body comes before the title. It's more logical for the title to come first. (Most forums work like that, official documents are written like that, emails and just about everything with a subject:body...)

We actually display the title first when viewing the post. The title is also the first piece of information that a user will see when browsing through other posts.


Here is a small rendering of how that could look

mockup with title coming before body

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1 comment thread

General comments (6 comments)
General comments
Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 4 years ago

Maybe we should put it back at the top. 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?

DonielF‭ wrote over 4 years ago

Background post on the rationale behind the current system: https://meta.codidact.com/q/277015

msh210‭ wrote over 4 years ago

This seems to be a duplicate of https://meta.codidact.com/q/277015

FoggyFinder‭ wrote over 4 years ago

@msh210 No, it's not. The Q from your link is "Why it was done that way". This Q is a proposal to change the current behavior to opposite.

Olin Lathrop‭ wrote over 4 years ago · edited over 4 years ago

I agree with this proposal. Currently, it annoys me every time I write an answer. The first few times it was downright confusing.

Welz‭ wrote over 4 years ago

@Monica your suggestion with the reminder seems like a great idea.