New feature: suggested thread titles when posting

[KatyMumsnet]

Hi all,

We’ve made a small change to the thread-creation page that you might notice.

When you start a new thread, you may now see a suggested title based on what you’ve written in your post.

The aim is simply to make posting a bit easier. In user research, quite a few people told us that thinking of a title can feel like a small blocker when they just want to get their question or situation posted. The suggestion is there to help with that - you can use it, edit it, or ignore it entirely and write your own as usual.

Clear titles also make it easier for other users to understand what a thread is about and find discussions later on.

Just to be clear:

• It’s only a suggestion, not something you have to use
• You can change it or delete it completely
• Your post content is not changed in any way

We’re flagging it here so people know what it is if they spot it.

As always, if you have feedback about how it works in practice, we’d love to hear it.

Actually, apologies, what I said above is wrong. You do seem to be able to ignore the suggestion without first clicking on it.

BTW, in my test post, I typed blah blah chat dog' and the suggested title was Site stuff: general chat and questions about the Dog forum

What I never understand is that given MN's reputation for letting grown up women have their own voice, that when it comes to making decisions they always give in to the minority that are not representative.

Its the same when the splite the Feminism and Women's Rights thread into 2, calling one chat for those who didn't want to talk about the impact of trans rights on women's rights. And given the years later court cases that have resulted it was and still is a real issue. And yet MNHQ decided those who wanted to bury their heads in the sand should be pandered to.

The result is now, the unintended consequences are, that some newer users see MNHQ's fake title imposed on FWR as meaning they can only talk about sex and gender, and worse still encouraged all sorts advocates for other politics to come and spread their politics as though it wasn't a forum whose core is feminism.

It is always a mistake to let administrators take decisions that they just see as about tasks, but fail to grasp the political or policy implications.

Ah the old user research chestnut....

Please don't hop aboard the AI bandwagon. It's not necessary and I seriously doubt anyone wants it.

MNHQ should re-instate the usual settings for creating a thread, ie title first then OP.

But offer an option for an AI generated title but IN NO WAY should this option be linked to whether a new thread can be posted.

It should be an option at the bottom.

Never, even let an automated choice option but linked to whether a post can be posted.

This is 101 practice.

It should never ever have been linked.

I think MNHQ can rely on all of us being able to copy and paste if we want to use a suggested title.

Just such a complete fail in terms of implementing a change and not even asking users if they wanted it.

And in this instance goes against the ethos and purpose of a forum.

I still can't post my thread - even though the software can't give me a title

I'm quite capable of thinking up my own thread titles. I don't need anything to "Help me write"

If people are really struggling to write thread titles, society is in very big trouble

I suspect it's more likely that user research gave it one mention or something and the tech bros seized on it as an excuse to utilise AI

That is a great shame because I hope there's some human input here somewhere...

That’s bonkers

If true that really is bonkers.

Never ever let a techie person take a decision on how something should be implemented, as their criteria has no relationship with how the world actually functions.

If anyone needs AI it is techies, although in the instance of MN I am sure the many contributors could easily give a response to a techie suggestions.

Let's not forget the bright blue redesign fiasco of earlier this year.

Techies take instruction.

They should never take content decisions.

Please please let us be able to turn off this "feature".

I will literally never use it.

I don't want the AI generator to use a single scrap of energy on coming up with useless titles for my posts. I've managed it myself for 20 odd years, I don't think I need a robot to start doing it for me now

God knows who you asked about this in your "user research" but MN managed to grow to it's current levels without AI generated thread titles so it can't be that much of a barrier to posts being created!

I don't know what the "user research" was but I don't remember it and I usually do most of the surveys.

Jesus.
why on earth would you introduce the option to have AI generate thread titles? This is awful. Nobody wants this!!

the one place I really don’t want to see ai creep is on forums, it’s people talking to people, I hate when posters post ChatGPT shite into a thread saying this is what ai “thinks” about the situation and I’d rather read a thread title that was just “help” than ai ramble titles

It just struck me this morning that this new feature will make it significantly harder to spot the AI spam threads in Active Conversations. If the list starts to be populated with bland, polished, humourless titles, we'll often need to click in before we can begin to try and work out if an OP is genuine.

Can you imagine what the Active list will look like if the AI titles catch on? The chat equivalent of UPF.

I actively avoid AI if I possibly can (and yes, I know in many instances I don't have a choice).

I add -ai to all my Google searches, I don't use chatgpt or any of the other ai tools, I've disabled copilot. (Although I was very tempted when I was looking at a pdf of an opera vocal score and Adobe noted that this was a long document, would I like a summary?)

I know as far as climate change goes, we're pretty well fucked anyway, but why do MNHQ want to make water shortages and global warming happen that little bit quicker? Never mind contributing to turning brains to mush through lack of thinking.

Isn't it odd how "a few people" make them change the entire site and functionality... yet hundreds and hundreds of of people asked and asked and asked and asked for editing for YEARS before they implemented it...

I'll bet more people have asked for the laugh reaction back than asked for help with creating a thread title...

Sums it up perfectly for me!

@KatyMumsnet a significant way you could improve on the current process of starting a thread would be to NOT make AIBU the default option. I don't know if it's deliberate on HQ's part or just because AIBU is the first choice in the alphabetic drop down menu, but AIBU is ridiculously overused as it is - and I also think many newbies literally don't know that any other topics exist.

Thus the site is overrun with stupid "AIBU to tell you about my awful husband" or "AIBU to ask for your best pasta recipes" or "AIBU to ask for Netflix recommendations" questions - which make the site something of a laughing stock and appear to be a silly place for silly women.

The day I need AI to think of a title for a thread is the day I give up on life. Of all the things to “fix” on MN this has to be right down at the bottom. What about using AI to catch all the obvious spam that I helpfully report every day? If I can spot a spam post title asking a spurious question surely AI can? Or sort out cutting and pasting.

AI comes with a high background cost and this is not a good use for it.

I’ve just started a new thread, I’m wondering if this new feature has been specially designed to produce the dullest and most verbose title possible?

Fuck AI - I hate it.

I won't be starting any new threads until this feature is removed. Anyone with me?

The humour would be totally lost!

I just put in the opening post on the current thread. AI suggested:

"Bluestocking women’s pub thread for sex, gender and general chat"

I put in the opening post from the Sparp thread and got

"Franglais or English chat thread for women, company, fun and art"

I think the gerbils will need to put a sign up behind the bar "No AI titles in the Bluestocking"

@ErrolTheDragon

Sign sorted. I reckon the first person who uses it gets barred from the pub!

Even in a pub run by gerbils and frequented by mythical creatures and animals, sometimes doing performative mime, brought to life courtesy of AI this is a step too far!

Hi all, just to clear up a couple of points as there seems to be some confusion about how this works.

The suggested title is generated automatically from the text of the post (so yes, it uses AI to create that suggestion). It is simply there as an optional prompt for anyone who is not sure what to put in the title.

A few important things to note:
• You do not need to click the suggestion in order to post
• You can ignore it completely and type your own title in the title field as usual
• If you do click it, you can edit or delete it just like any other title in the title field above the suggestion

So if you prefer writing your own titles (as many people will), you can carry on doing that exactly as before. We can see that plenty of people are continuing to do that.

Separately, we are also making a change in the next couple of weeks so that AIBU will no longer be the default topic when starting a thread. If you start a thread from within a specific topic, the default will remain the topic you are posting in. @LindorDoubleChoc

On the research side, we regularly test parts of the site with users and gather feedback when people are going through things like the thread creation process. This is something that came up frequently.

As ever, if it turns out not to be useful in practice we’ll be keeping an eye on that too.

Can you put the title back to the top please.