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I guess not. I have just been informed by Mod on another thread that it’s okay to post this stuff -— I guess, it’s okay to post it all the time, in every thread, sometimes longer than the title itself, and with it being unclear whether the paren is the brainchild of the poster or the actual addition by the author of the article.

I have been okay with the “barf alert” over the years and with the occasional comment. (Posters used to police themselves on the “barf alert” because if it was used injudiciously — i.e. NOT rarely -— the poster got their lunch jumped in by other freepers.)

But, IMHO, the trend toward adding comments in the title box has gotten out of control lately. I scroll through the forum and see nothing but thread after thread that has a lengthy “explanation” or snark — or, worst of all, a restatement of the title in the poster’s own words, as if we wouldn’t get it otherwise — added to the title box. Which makes me, the reader, have to wade through someone else’s stuff before I can even figure out what the article’s title is.

I don’t see how that follows either the letter or the spirit of the rule that the title of the post is to be the exact title of the article. I don’t read that to mean “the exact title of the article + the poster’s editorial comment, snark, or restatement of the title in their own words.”

That said, maybe the mods will take another look at what this trend is really doing to the format of the forum. That’s the only reason I care. I get sick of trying to scan titles and having to wade through someone’s comment that should, at least as long as I’ve been around here, be in the comment box.

And I don’t know why a poster would think their comments need to be “in lights” in the title box. I don’t get that. I’m sure the posters don’t mean it this way, but it ends up being rather rude. The only exceptions might be the OCCASIONAL “barf alert” and a paren to make the title clear IF the first part of the posted excerpt doesn’t make the title clear.