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It is possible to click on this question title above ↑, which would cause the page to refresh.

I'm wondering why the question title is a link to itself and the same page? Why isn't it just written as solid text? SEO perhaps?

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  • 18
    I don't know, but I click it to refresh the page
    – juan
    Apr 23, 2010 at 17:35
  • @dow: Ctrl+F5?
    – perbert
    Apr 23, 2010 at 17:43
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    @voy that would involve using the other hand, don't mess with my system.
    – juan
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:09
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    @Down: not to mention taking my hand off the mouse to press F5 is very tiring.
    – IAbstract
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:49
  • @dboarman: that's why you should be using your left hand to do your typing when holding your mouse with the right.
    – perbert
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:56
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    @voyager: don't tell me what to do with my left hand...Like Downvoter, I have a system.
    – IAbstract
    Apr 23, 2010 at 21:45
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    But why not using the refresh button? Also pages with "back"-links doesn't make any sense for me because you also have a "back"-button in your browser and you also have a "refresh"-button in the environment of your browser.
    – TheFox
    Oct 17, 2014 at 11:46
  • I was just about to ask the same question to answer myself in “Q&A style”, but then the system suggested this one to me. Here is my wording: “Why is it possible to click on question titles on the question page itself? (no different than refreshing the page)” “It is possible to click on this question title above ↑, which would cause the page to refresh. What is the purpose of the question title being clickable?<br /> It is a hyperlink referring to itself (it's own page).” And the answer: meta.stackexchange.com/a/325170/379894 .
    – neverMind9
    Mar 13, 2019 at 14:35

5 Answers 5

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I personally use this link quite often to refresh the question or to copy the link to the question. I find it quite useful.

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    Same reasons here. Especially if I reached a question from a permalink to one of the answers, somehow my refresh seems cleaner if I do it from the question link itself.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Apr 23, 2010 at 17:36
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    But it's more complicated to copy the title itself. I copy texts by doubleclicking the first word of a text and move the cursor to the end of the text holding the mouse button down and then Ctrl+C. So it selects word by word, not charachter by charachter. If you link the title you can't doubleclick the first word to do so, you must click beside the first word and probably remove paragraphs, new lines,... or other text styles. So it make no benefit linking the title. If you want to copy the URL use the URL bar on top of your browser.
    – TheFox
    Oct 17, 2014 at 11:57
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I believe that is because you can access a given question in different ways, and you might want to share the link of the question itself. Giving you a canonical link somewhere is good design and polite to your users so they don't have to go through hoops to get it (go to address bar, delete everything after the number, etc).

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  • You can get the link from the browser's address bar.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:10
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    @ChrisF: I know (go to address bar, delete everything after the number, etc), but that is not the canonical link.
    – perbert
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:16
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    but the link on the title includes the name and is exactly the same as the address bar.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:40
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    @ChrisF it depends. This is a valid link, but is not the canonical link, and were you to get it, you still need to go through the mild annoyance of trimming the link to the usable form. It's a nicety. Nice to have, but of course not a must have.
    – perbert
    Apr 23, 2010 at 18:55
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    No, if I got to a page via a comment link, the URL in the address bar is the URL to that specific comment. More than once I've meant to use a link to the question and accidentally used a link that jumped straight to a comment instead. I'm glad I can easily get it from the title instead of selecting/deleting stuff within the address bar. (I realize I'm responding to a six-year-old comment, so ping removed.)
    – Monica Cellio
    Aug 11, 2016 at 14:32
  • @Monica another way is clicking the "share" beneath the question and copy the link. (Saves the need to right click the title and copy the url)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Oct 26, 2016 at 9:31
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    @ShadowWizard sure, but I was talking about a canonical link, not a personalized one. For example, if you paste the canonical URL into another post, like on meta, it's rendered with the question title instead of the raw URL. Even in comments where that doesn't happen, with the canonical link somebody can see which question it is -- handy if a comment is listing a bunch of related questions. For a compact URL and possible credit toward the Announcer badge, you need the "share" one.
    – Monica Cellio
    Oct 26, 2016 at 13:08
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Because it has several advantages:

  • Easy way to duplicate tabs on a browser that does not have a native tab duplication feature + just one middle mouse click away. When the user does not know where to click, the question title is the first option.
  • Acts as a bigger refresh button.
  • Easy access to browser's context menu that has many options at one place such as sharing, copying URL, bookmarking, etc.
  • 1 > 0. Minor advantages > no advantages. And that feature bothers nobody. It is just a detail. One of many details. Another example is the slightly different colour of the mandatory tags for questions on meta.stackexchange.com, which is for highlighting.
  • Ability for all mobile browsers to easily download the page to a file. Some browsers (such as Samsung S-Browser are able to store pages locally in their private user storage, but only save pages as a file in the download folder when used with "Save Link As".).
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I presume you are referring to the circled title. Well, why wouldn't it link right back to the page? I would presume that it is a forced refresh (not from cache) for the question.

I do use the link to refresh when I am watching for an answer. Seems to be a better refresh than equivalent to using Ctrl-F5.

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  • yes that is what i am speaking of. I was wondering why it was made a link at all? The refresh makes sense I suppose. That the only reason? A trivial question by me maybe?
    – Nick
    Apr 23, 2010 at 17:42
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    Wrong. It is just ordinary link. It is like pressing F5 without any CTRL. Cache will be used as usual.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Aug 11, 2016 at 10:25
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For me it has several benefits:

  • Refresh the page

  • Remove the anchor to a comment or answer if I want to refresh the page

    For example: Open a comment link (like this one). The page opens and scrolls down to the comment. When you now refresh the page it keeps going back to the comment. If you want to go to the question instead if you refresh, click the link. The comment anchor will be removed from the URL and the page won't scroll down any more.

  • Use that link to share the question (I am aware of the share button, but you actually don't always want to use it).

This was originally an answer on a duplicate.

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