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Proposal: Computer Science Educators

After walking through some "Example Questions" of "Computer Science Educators" I wonder where the best position is to include the questions target group.

For instance when we look at @vk2015 question

I have been asked to explain the difference between "coding" and "programming" to non-CS teachers. Any thoughts?

we could be simplifie this into

Whats the difference between "coding" and "programming"?

by omitting the "what I am supposed to do"-block and the target group of the explanation.

Although this pattern might remind you more of some Stack Overflow questions, the title of a post should be as short and as specific as possible in my opinion. Though, since all questions are posted on a site called "Computer Science Educators", isn't it obvious that the more concrete information will be explained in the questions body?

An other example is @Ltww question where the OP already shrank his post:

What are some examples of when you might use a two-dimensional list?

But as @Adam commented, this would or could be seen as a pre-existing questions of if no additional details -- like target group etc. -- are added in the title.

Now I wonder if minimizing the question title is a good idea and explaining all this other stuff in the questions body -- although this information is very important for any answers.
Or is this additional info also an essential part of the question and should therefore be included in the title.


Update I
Since the target group would be a common tag on Computer Science Educators, when it's used, it would be include in the question title automatically, if it isn't found there: So

Whats the difference between "coding" and "programming"?

would be displayed (for instance) as

secondary-education -- Whats the difference between "coding" and "programming"?*

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    Since this is my first post on Area 51 I hope my question is suitable.
    – elegent
    Jan 7, 2016 at 18:53
  • It's fine - this is the purpose of meta. To discuss the quirks and quarks of proposals! :)
    – Zizouz212
    Jan 24, 2016 at 2:09

2 Answers 2

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Search for these on Google, see what you see.

Google doesn't show the body of the question, wit Ifs and Buts, it shows the title.

A title has to be an accurate summary; if you remove the core, critical, essential info from the title, it is no longer a suitabl title - and (as well as allowing new users to get confused if they're not thining straight) you are unfairly confusing the rest of the web.

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  • IMHO the target group would be a tag name and will be include in the question title automatically, if it isn't found there. So Whats the difference between "coding" and "programming"? would be displayed for instance as Freshman -- Whats the difference between "coding" and "programming"?
    – elegent
    Jan 17, 2016 at 23:04
  • That could work. Unfortunately, "Freshman" is a weak term (rare except in USA, and has different meanings in different jurisidictions) so I hope that doesn't get used as a tag. A clearer tag would solve this problem - but SO tags are expected to be as short as possible, so those aims may be in conflict?
    – Adam
    Jan 18, 2016 at 15:50
  • Yes I agree with you :) "Freshman" was just an (ambiguous) example. A better tag would be "secondary-education", which is by the way also used on matheducators.SE.
    – elegent
    Jan 18, 2016 at 16:45
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These are mostly logistics that will be determined and figured out as a site moves on into the beta phases.

Question titles aren't the only factor for the SEO of a stack exchange site too. The leading tag of a question will be a part of that optimization: a title will read [tag] title rather than just the title. However, it's really early to be figuring out these little things - and are better handled once a site actually moves into the beta phases.

As for how the questions should be worded:

The title should be as simple as possible. It should be clear, concise and to the point. If there is fluff that people don't always need to see from the homepage of the site, it shouldn't be there. The extra details of a question can always be presented in the body of the question itself.

If the fear that including less information in a title will bring low-quality and incorrect answers, you've got two things to consider.

  1. I'm a moderator on Open Source SE (which I highly encourage you to check out), and it's fairly normal to see questions like this:

    Licensing for Open Source project which uses commercial libraries

    That's an acceptable title. It allows us to figure out what the core of the title is, and gives us a rough outline of what to expect from the question itself. We don't need a list of libraries that will be used, or what license we want in the end: we can always figure these out from the question body itself.

  2. I'm just going to copy my comment from one of the example questions.

    Judge the question, not the answers that it can potentially receive. That statement is only a matter of opinion on your part: it may not even prove to be true (and the same for me for that matter). – Zizouz212 16 mins ago

By judging the question on points that aren't proven, and just a matter of thought does the question a great disservice. You're not judging the question for being a question, but rather judging it on your own premature thoughts. Have you seen this question in practice? Well, clearly not. This proposal hasn't even gone to beta.

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