Yeah, resolution of that mess sometimes depends on how your viewer is seeing the images. Online galleries for instance deal with it in different ways. I prefer to think of title as like the book or painting title, a sort of name of the image. Sometimes I use stuff there to identify sequence, sometimes as simple as "Tour de France Stage 2, 4 of 6" or something. The description is just that (caption is sorta being deprecated for the more descriptive description, heh). That makes it easier for say the reader or presenter, just the titles look more like organizational tools, while the description is more content oriented. Like the blurb for a book. Gnits example above is like that.
Smugmug must be on crack. People have complained about this before; I don't know that you even can view title. I think most rename files in order to use that for sequence rather than relying on caption.
BTW, is there a way to add into a caption a title or sequence automatically? I've used John Beardsworth's Search Replace Transfer plugin to transfer a sequential filename into a title, but it would be nice to have something that could just put in a custom sequence, like the one above. Is there anything like that? I know PM can do it but it would be nice to have in Lr.