While reading through a fine discussion on whether to disallow single-word titles in Seekers of Perl Wisdom, I began to ponder the situation in greater depth. It occured to me that many of those who frequent that page use those very single-word titles simply because they do not know how to categorize their question; hence, they are here asking it. And if they knew what to call it, perhaps they would research more of it on their own first?

And this made me ask myself:

How do people go about finding out the answers to their questions?

Extreme methods came down to two kinds:

1. Reseach the problem personally
2. Immediately try to get a quick answer from someone else

It appears that many single-word titled requests -- not all by any means -- are of the second method, whereas more verbose descriptions appear to be by those who use the first method.

The obvious exceptions are those that pour through the documentation, the books, the sample code, but still don't "get it," and so post a help request with a less-than-descriptive title; and those that write up a beautiful descriptive text with a clear title, reminiscent of a Request For Proposal document put out to consulting firms.

I know that I, personally, will try to research everything on my own, but I will also ask coworkers, chums, and the occasional mailman for assistance. However, when coming up with an appropriate title for my posts, I will sometimes stumble, and fail to think of anything more descriptive than "HELP!" When that happens, I walk away from the problem, and come back to it later, hopefully thinking of a suitable name for the post, so that people will readily understand my question.

What have your experiences been?

Update!

Kudos to Errto for pointing out that my links were absolute, and might accidentally log someone off.

Thanks!