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When entering a question, StackExchange tries to suggest previous answers. It does so by filling a "Questions that may already have your answer" box between the title and the body of the question. Such box appears and disappears, making the text box for the question go up and down in a distracting way, and sometimes interfering with mouse clicks and text selections.

Can this feature be disabled? Or could this box be made fixed? By the way, there is a similar "Similar questions" box on the right already.

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    Actually, I find it a useful feature. In theory, it should be unnecessary, because (I suppose) one would get the same results by doing a search for the title. However, in practice, one frequently forgets to do that. After you've typed in the question and moved the cursor, the list of "Questions that may already have your answer" should go away. Doesn't it?
    – Faheem Mitha
    Jun 22, 2014 at 13:22
  • It goes away, but it comes back if I refine the question before submitting. Yes, it is an useful feature, but it is implemented in an annoying way. I would rather see an empty suggestion box (when there are no suggestions) than having such box come and go.
    – Eleno
    Jun 22, 2014 at 13:31
  • Write the title last?
    – user44370
    Jun 23, 2014 at 23:09
  • @illuminÉ: I refine both the title and the body of my questions while I am writing. Hence I go back and forth between the title and the body. I would rather have a static suggestion box that gets filled whenever I change the title than having a dynamic one that appears and disappears. Because of delays in the network, my mouse clicks don't always end up where intended. Well, henceforth I will resist the urge to rewrite the title to make it clearer or more specific. So, instead of writing the title last, I will write it once.
    – Eleno
    Jun 24, 2014 at 8:16

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I rather like that the suggestion box works this way. It's happened to me that a search for keywords found nothing, but the title matcher found something relevant. Even if it finds nothing relevant, it's sometimes useful to mention in the question “this earlier question has a similar title, but my question is different in that …”.

The suggestion box tries to shove potential duplicates in your face. Well, that sounds about right to me.

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  • I agree that the suggestion box is useful and it should have high visibility. If it only avoided making the text area jump up and down...
    – Eleno
    Jun 23, 2014 at 22:59
  • A static suggestion box that gets filled would do.
    – Eleno
    Jun 24, 2014 at 8:16
  • @Elena - with the existing suggestion box that would create a big space after title, something like this - it doesn't really 'jump up and down' unless you edit the title anyway. The main use of it is to find questions that already exist that could have an answer - I suppose it could be replaced with something where you have to search the site, and possibly outside the site as well (the lack of research some people do before asking questions is amazing), before asking the question.
    – Wilf
    Jun 24, 2014 at 21:50
  • @Wilf: I wouldn't mind a suggestion box as big as the one shown in the picture. The suggestion box is a useful feature. I just feel that, by displacing the text area, its implementation is intrusive. The problem lies in the delay of the network: if the delay is noticeable, then suggestions fall out of sync with edits. My problem is that the suggestion box appears when I am already doing something else, after having edited the title.
    – Eleno
    Jun 25, 2014 at 18:46

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