Title changes of posts are ignored for next post [SITE-BUG]

[Nepster]

Assume the following situation happens in a thread: The first post has the title "Beginning", while for the second post the author has changed the title to "No longer a beginning". Then I want to reply to it and write the third post.
Expected behavior: My third post has the title "No longer a beginning" (unless I change the title again)
Actual behavior: The third post has the title "Beginning".

As usually the latest title describes the current discussion topic better that the original first title, I suggest changing this behavior. As Flopsy mentioned in chat, the current behavior is especially annoying when having a thread for multiple graphic styles: Every time a new style gets added, one has to modify the very first post instead of simply posting a new post with an adapted title.

[kieranmillar]

For what it's worth, replying to a thread uses the title in the opening post, but quoting a post gives your post the same title as the post you're quoting.

I worry about updating the thread topic title with whatever the latest post used as the post title, someone can come along and put any old title in their post and then suddenly everybody is wondering where the thread went as they can no longer find it in the thread list. (This can still happen with the thread starter editing their thread's original post with something completely unreleated, to be fair, but at least with that restriction the trolling possibilities are limited).

[namida]

Using the specific example there, that's a poor way of handling it anyway. If the styles are meant to be a collection, the first post should contain information on all of them. If they're meant to be unrelated and are simply from the same author, there should be two seperate topics.

[mobius]

I have used this feature in the past to try and point out things (in vain because of this "glitch") but honestly I think there should be better ways to do that. I would actually be in favor of not allowing a responder to change the title of the thread at all; only the person who made the topic (and mods) should be allowed to alter the title. Better to make a new topic for multiple threads/ideas/things.

But I agree; the current behavior is confusing. It seems like it allows you to change the title but you kind of can't anyway.

[IchoTolot]

I would actually be in favor of not allowing a responder to change the title of the thread at all; only the person who made the topic (and mods) should be allowed to alter the title.

I think this is very important!

The topics creator (and the admins/moderators when they need to ) alone shall dictate the title.

[Nepster]

My post was basically triggered by one event. So I am happy with any proposed change, that prevents the following: Someone else changed a title, I replied and then the IRC notification displayed a completely different title. This got me thinking I replied to a completely different topic, and I went back and checked my post.

Such other proposed changes include möbius's suggestion:

I would actually be in favor of not allowing a responder to change the title of the thread at all; only the person who made the topic (and mods) should be allowed to alter the title. Better to make a new topic for multiple threads/ideas/things.

Using the specific example there, that's a poor way of handling it anyway. If the styles are meant to be a collection, the first post should contain information on all of them. If they're meant to be unrelated and are simply from the same author, there should be two seperate topics.

While I agree that the first post itself should mention all the styles, one often thinks of updating the first post itself, but forgets to change the title there. At least that happened to me a few times.

[Dullstar]

I agree with the proposal that respondents should not be allowed to change the thread topic.

However, what of existing posts when the topic title is changed? Assume for a moment that, regardless of what is allowed, only the first post's title is altered. My understanding of the current behavior is that existing posts will keep the title they already have, while new posts will take on the title of the OP. According to kieranmillar, quoting the post results in the title being that of the quoted post. I tested this by quoting his post, but it doesn't appear to have done anything to the title - maybe related to the use of quick reply? I have since edited the test out of the post.

I believe the questions at play here are the following:

Should respondents be allowed to alter the title?
Should the title of the first post be alterable?
Should the OP be allowed to alter the title of subsequent posts, and if so, should the title of the first post be updated?
Which should be prioritized for the title of new posts: the most recent post's title, or the original post's current title?
How should changing the title of one post affect the title of other posts?
How should the changing of post titles by moderators work?

My proposal operates on the following guiding principle: the title of the thread as a whole should always match the title of the original post. This suggests that replies should always be given the title of the overall thread by default, and not the title of the most recent post, as automatically updating the original post's topic would be potentially abusable.

Alteration of the original post's title by OP should always be possible - this avoids having to start unnecessary new threads - maybe you want to convert that post you created for your first graphics set to a post featuring all of your graphics sets; or perhaps you've made a major update to a project of yours and wish to update the topic title to reflect that (e.g. Such&Suchlems v1.0 getting updated to Such&Suchlems v1.1).

I have no preference regarding whether OP should be allowed to change the topic title in a reply to the thread, but I think that if such behavior is allowed, the first post's title should be automatically updated. This potentially creates an issue with edits to posts, which could be most easily resolved by only updating the title of the thread if the edited post is OP's most recent posts. That issue could also be avoided by only allowing title edits to the first post, which I would assume to be the simplest behavior.

Titles of existing posts other than the first one should not be altered by changes to the title, so as to keep a record of the title of the thread at the time a post was created. Most of these posts are probably not going to be edited long after posting, so I would leave the titles intact if a change were to be made after the post is created. Alternatively, do replies need a title?

Moderators should always be allowed to edit post titles. The most logical behavior to me would be to allow both isolated changes to a post title, and bulk changes affecting all posts with identical titles (probably ignoring the "Re: " automatically added to the beginning of replies), but the moderators would have a better idea of what their needs are.

[namida]

Do replies really need to have titles at all? To tell the truth, I don't even generally notice them.

[Nepster]

Do replies really need to have titles at all? To tell the truth, I don't even generally notice them.

I like that the title is displayed above each post, not because I usually read them, but because it allows checking the actual topic without scrolling to the top of the page. But that is a purely visual thing. So I would be equally happy if titles are tied to threads instead of posts, and posts just display the thread's title.