I would like to suggest a more specific title, such as “Rationality Case Study: Adenovirus strain #36” or something similar.
That way, not only do you satisfy the general principle that titles should be informative as possible, but you also avoid giving the impression that this post is purely rhetorical (with an implied thesis that you supplied earlier).
I have heard people say that changing the title causes the post to be re-sent in the RSS feed (I wouldn’t know, since I don’t use RSS myself). Perhaps that bug has been fixed by now, but if not, then it is a good idea to make any title changes as soon as possible after posting.
I think that happens because if you change the title, it’ll get a different title and URL sent in the RSS feed, and the reader is going to think it’s a different item. There’s an RSS tag, , which is meant to work around this by allowing the feed to specify a unique identifier for each item, but the LW RSS feeds use it incorrectly; it uses the post’s URL as its value, and that changes when the post’s title changes. I think it would work correctly if it chopped off the post title part and just sent (e.g.) “http://lesswrong.com/lw/2qm/″ in the tag.
I would like to suggest a more specific title, such as “Rationality Case Study: Adenovirus strain #36” or something similar.
That way, not only do you satisfy the general principle that titles should be informative as possible, but you also avoid giving the impression that this post is purely rhetorical (with an implied thesis that you supplied earlier).
Ok with me. But since this is my first top-level posting, is there anything I need to know before I change the title?
I have heard people say that changing the title causes the post to be re-sent in the RSS feed (I wouldn’t know, since I don’t use RSS myself). Perhaps that bug has been fixed by now, but if not, then it is a good idea to make any title changes as soon as possible after posting.
I think that happens because if you change the title, it’ll get a different title and URL sent in the RSS feed, and the reader is going to think it’s a different item. There’s an RSS tag, , which is meant to work around this by allowing the feed to specify a unique identifier for each item, but the LW RSS feeds use it incorrectly; it uses the post’s URL as its value, and that changes when the post’s title changes. I think it would work correctly if it chopped off the post title part and just sent (e.g.) “http://lesswrong.com/lw/2qm/″ in the tag.
I think we’ve still got the bug.
Yup.