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I'm currently writing a questions about namespaces for c++. After writing the title, SO will propose related answers to my question from title only. Unfortunately (very fortunately really), namespaces apply in many languages so unless I make a specific reference to c++ in the title, the suggested answers will not be aware of the target language for my question.

I thought that editing the tag sections of the question then going back to the question title would prompt different suggestions but it did not.

My question title is "Global namespace is not checked in other namespaces". I do agree that it is not the finest title, but I have trouble formulating a correct question since I understand my problem poorly for the moment.

Global namespace is not checked in other namespaces

This is what I get after typing in the title for suggested questions:

Related Questions

Note that none are for C++. This list does not update after adding the body or tags.

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    Did not understand much, but my suggestion from what I understood would be, let the tags do their job. namespace and c++ as the question tags should suffice. Don't include that in the title of the question.
    – Rahul
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:05
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    @R.J, the point is that if he just writes "How do I foo the bar namespace?" it will recommend posts on how to foo the bar in Javascript, or in Perl, or in some language that has namespaces that isn't C++, even if the question is tagged C++. So if he wants to get relevant results, he would have to include C++ in the title, even though it should only be in the tags.
    – jmac
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:09
  • Screenshots with freehand circles to demonstrate exactly what you wrote and let us recreate it would be awesome.
    – jmac
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:10
  • @jmac : exactly. I rewrote a part of the question to make it clearer
    – Eric
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:10
  • jmac - Yeah I understood that now. @Eric:- Well in that case, shouldn't you search about that in SO or Google, before exactly posting the question?! I'm sure if there were any questions like that before, you'd get them in the search results. Don't use the question recommendation things as a substitute for search. Use the full features of search and if you're unable to find anything, then post a question(without having to worry about the recommendations). I hope I got it right this time.
    – Rahul
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:13
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    @R.J I know that frequently I will search beforehand and not find something, but as soon as I've written a title and about 50 words, a totally relevant post will pop up in the side bar because I gave terms that I didn't use in the title. And anyway, people don't search beforehand, so giving them an easier way not to post a duplicate by looking at tags as a part of the search would help ease the problem, no?
    – jmac
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:15
  • SO suggested answers are different from the ones from google. I searched google, then wrote a question but the suggested answers were mostly irrelevant because they were targeting a different language. Sometimes I get meaningful results there event if I didn't find good ones in google.
    – Eric
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:18
  • Anyway, I understand that it is not a critical feature, just a possible enhancement
    – Eric
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:19
  • You could search on SO as well. There is a SO search facility inplace just for that.
    – Rahul
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:21
  • @jmac - I know that. I did that just to differentiate the message split up there, as to what part was meant for you, and what was meant for the OP. Nothing else.
    – Rahul
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:22
  • @R.J, Yes, there are a million ways to search. And yet despite that, we still have a "Questions that may already have your answer" on every new question to catch the countless people who don't search first. I think that's a good feature, and can't see a reason not to make it look at tags as well (excluding perhaps meta-tags such as feature-request which don't carry any relevance).
    – jmac
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:27
  • @jmac : Thanks, you were less lazy than me =)
    – Eric
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:36
  • FYI, if you want to get responses, you shouldn't be lazy (everyone loves freehand circles, not everyone loves the process of taking screenshots and adding them).
    – jmac
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:44
  • Yeah, I know. I'm more used to programming questions where screenshot don't matter much.
    – Eric
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:50

1 Answer 1

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After you start typing in the body of the post, you should get a pane on the right side which replaces the editing help and shows similar questions. After typing in the body of your post, this is what I got:

Similar Questions

While this doesn't change depending on the flags added, due to the code you use it looks like it is recommending much better questions. You may want to use this pane instead.

I do support having all of this consolidated to include tag info too though, although that may be separate from your request.

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    This is useful. The feature request itself should still stand, and this suggests it's probably quite possible. It seems this pane might be doing a better job than the thing with the job of showing you places your question might already be answered...
    – doppelgreener
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:38
  • Note that the related questions sidebar is documented as taking tags into account.
    – Shog9
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:45
  • @Shog9, I got thrown off by the 45-second update (I was impatient and copy-pasting from an existing post). Thanks for the reference though.
    – jmac
    Nov 7, 2013 at 4:46

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