A current FAQ on https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10647 seems ambiguous on whether titles that begin with “How do I ⟨do something⟩?” or “How to ⟨do something⟩?” are desirable on Stack Exchange sites generally, or whether a shorter title like “Doing ⟨something⟩” is to be preferred.

By ambiguous I mean things like [the most upvoted answer][1] saying:

> **4. Don't start with "How do I..."**
> 
> Writing in that style ensures that your title will fail criteria 1-3,
> and get less attention than it deserves.
> 
> This is a question site, and people will understand your titles are
> questions.

while the FAQ title starts with:

> **"How do I..."**

Without going into all other possible title structures, and individual sites may already have clarified this in their own Metas, is there generally a case for preferring one of the above over the others while performing more comprehensive editing of a question?

A similar question (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148261/preferred-title-format-gerund-or-how-to) was asked long ago from what I suspect was a pure Stack Overflow perspective.  It was made a duplicate of https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10647 an hour and a bit later which, in retrospect, seems to have been hasty because unambiguous advice on this particular aspect is not offered in that FAQ.


  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/10648/31