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It would be really swell if the question title was included right above the preview of the body of the question.

Every so often, I'll be asking about something and the very act of composing a good question helps me better refine the problem. I go back and forth between SO and my workspace testing other possibilities and working on getting the best SSCCE. As I'm going back and forth updating the question, I'm constantly looking down at the preview, making sure everything's just right.

Once it is, I hit submit and see:

Plz halp me Porblem with issue

That is followed by a brilliant question that should have been titled something like How can I reduce manifold wear when using third-party flanges?

This is exacerbated by the dupe suggestions. For a question of any length, the title I entered won't even be on screen by the time I'm near posting. Even when it is, it's easy to lose it up there as it's literally the smallest text on the top half of the page.

Thankfully I can edit to go fix things, but it would be easier to just get it right the first time. I know that improving the quality of titles around here is of keen interest, and this seems like an easy change that wouldn't bother anyone.

Thoughts?

Update:

Seeing how there's continuing furor over automatic editing of titles, showing askers their title with the automatic edits applied might help a lot. Some people will post "Question title broken?" questions here on meta, but those are the people whose titles are currently being broken without them noticing. Hopefully everyone else will get the hint and write better titles.

(There could even be a link to the policy when automatic edits are applied, but that starts to sound like real work to add.)

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  • 5
    I support this; it would make the look and feel more consistent with the question editor (the one that is displayed when the edit link is clicked).
    – user102937
    Dec 8, 2011 at 0:32
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    I have a porblem with an issue too. Where can I get help?
    – Pekka
    Dec 8, 2011 at 0:38
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    @Pekka: You're beyond help. :P
    – user102937
    Dec 8, 2011 at 0:42
  • Shouldn't this feature request be closed? We can see the title while typing our question.
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Feb 20, 2021 at 18:21
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    @Martin Could you possibly explain where the problem lies? Or why you cannot see the question title while writing up a question? Am I missing something, probably am.
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Feb 20, 2021 at 18:23
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    @Mari-LouA You cannot see the preview of the title. This is problem mainly on the sites using MathJax. MathOverflow Meta: Feature request: question title should appear above question preview, Mathematics Meta: Why not add the title of the question in the preview while writing it? and Latex preview on question title? I was reminded of this by the recent post on meta.MO. I should have realized that this is not really a problem on non-MathJax sites and ...
    – Martin
    Feb 20, 2021 at 18:38
  • ... I should have mentioned that explicitly. Sorry for the oversight. (I am not really sure - maybe this would warrant a separate feature request? Although there already are several on various per-site metas. Or a new answer explaining that missing preview can be a problem if the title contains MathJax?)
    – Martin
    Feb 20, 2021 at 18:39
  • @Martin Perhaps you could ask the mods to withdraw this bounty, so you can set up a new one with a more detailed bounty message. But perhaps the majority of users are already aware of this flaw on Mathematics
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Feb 20, 2021 at 20:07
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    @Mari-LouA I have posted a separated question asking specifically about MathJax: Show preview of the title when editing/asking - at least on the MathJax sites. (I would not worry too much about the bounty - after all, those are just imaginary internet points. It's my own mistake - seeing several feature requests on Mathematics Meta, I came with the mindset that there must already be a similar feature request on Meta Stack Exchange. And after finding this post, I missed the fine point that it is only problem for MathJax.)
    – Martin
    Feb 21, 2021 at 7:32

1 Answer 1

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-7

The title of your proposed question is also in the browser's window (tab) title area as you compose it on the /ask page.

So no matter how far you've scrolled down, you can at least see the first (n) characters of your question, however many your chosen browser allows to appear in the tab / window.

Note the title of the window/tab in the below screenshot:

ask question page screenshot

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    I'd like to think that if it was actually previewed on the page, people might finally realize that you can't use Markdown in titles (if I see one more title with backticks in it...), but that's probably just wishful thinking.
    – Tim Stone
    Dec 9, 2011 at 8:15
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    You only have one tab open. Is that your usual browsing behavior? Currently, I have gmail, Hacker News, a dozen tabs on Electrical Engineering, a half-dozen tabs on Meta, and three SE chat rooms (EE site room, EE mod room, TL), a few parts on Digikey, Sparkfun's page, WolframAlpha, and some datasheets. The title of this question is currently "Please." This isn't a functional solution.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Dec 9, 2011 at 14:03
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    Also, I never look at the tab titles unless I'm trying to change tabs. Above the preview would be a much more appropriate location for this information.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Dec 9, 2011 at 14:04
  • Potentially useful in some cases if you don't have many tabs open and it's a short title, but it's not quite the same.
    – John
    Dec 9, 2011 at 14:45
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    It might be showing to you because you go in edit,you were not creating question.
    – Fawad
    Nov 13, 2016 at 8:55
  • This was linked from the math meta site. Math questions often have MathJax in the titles, for which previews would be nice.
    – Matt Samuel
    Dec 13, 2018 at 1:45

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