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Actual title: No, I Don't Want To Configure Your App! Yet ANOTHER needless title edit by HN moderators. Seriously? stop editing the titles! Not only do you suc

Actual title: No, I Don't Want To Configure Your App! Yet ANOTHER needless title edit by HN moderators. Seriously? stop editing the titles! Not only do you suck at editing them and often butcher the original meaning and intent, but it's totally unnecessary and adds ZERO value. Meanwhile, I have to bring it up that you butchered the title, which detracts the comments from the actual discussion. Just stop. Edit: is there any statistics for how often HN titles are different from their actual articles? Maybe some analysis for how often they changed the tone or meaning too. Could be a fun little project for someone.

phaed 11y ago
God forbid someone get offended by the original title...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
tim333 11y ago
Kind of backing that up I read half way through the article wondering how it was arguing "Don't Configure Applications" as I had not noticed the title edit. Though I may be less observant than most.
d23 11y ago
The title of the original article should ALWAYS be a safe fallback, or perhaps even a requirement.
- dang 11y ago
  Such a rule would leave HN a sitting duck for misleading titles and linkbait.
dang 11y ago
That level of indignation seems a tad overwrought. The article title is obvious linkbait, so changing it was called for by the HN guidelines. People sometimes mistakenly think that the guidelines ask for the original title to always be used, but that's not so: see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. In this case the procedure we followed is almost a technical one. First, take out the obvious linkbait: "no" and "your". That leaves "I don't want to configure app[s]", and that's misleading, since the article is not about a personal desire but rather a critique in general of applications that require configuration. "Don't configure applications" seemed as close to that as one could get without being either misleading or linkbait. Think of it as dropping a perpendicular from the point of the original title to the HN guideline. But that's not to say we got it right in this case, let alone always get it right. When we do a bad job of a title, a good way to show that is by suggesting a better one, i.e. one that is more accurate and neutral. If you read HN often enough to be mad about title changes, you should be aware of how happily we accept better suggestions from users. Just please don't suggest a title that goes back to breaking the HN guidelines, since that's always the reason why we change them in the first place. By the way, if you think we suck at editing titles, that is likely because you notice the cases you dislike while the others blend into the background. Everyone bats zero if you only count the strikes. I'm going to mark this subthread off topic now. Edit: ok, let's try "A rant about application configuration" instead of "Don't configure applications".
- meesterdude 11y ago
  First, I don't think it's linkbait. I see plenty of linkbait on HN, but that is not. That is framing it from an individual's perspective, and it is an opinion piece on configuration. You're just reading the words without understanding the actual meaning behind them, and what that conveys to the reader when they look at a HN link. This is what linkbait looks like: watch what these this kid can do with a keyboard! / 10 tips for a slimmer you! (you wont believe number 3!) / I saved $3000 a month on hosting with this one trick Yes, I want you to be editing linkbait titles so they are actually descriptive and helpful to users. I am grateful for that thankless service. But this isn't linkbait. and another post you edited wasn't either. And it's REALLY annoying because in both cases it totally changed the meaning. here is what I would suggest: 1) make it clear in the guidelines what linkbait is. I think that is not established. 2) make it clear when a title has been edited in the UI 3) when a title differs from it's original, cite the original, and explain the reason for the change. 4) only change it if you can really do a better job than the original title; or if someone else suggests something better. (better being: more descriptive of the contents). Err on the side of leaving it alone.
  - dang 11y ago
    There are many genres of linkbait. You've mentioned some, but indignant denunciations are another, and so are personal appeals, especially negative ones ("no, you are not foo", "I am not your bar", and so on.) Such formulas are bait because they grab people's attention due to human hard-wiring, not anything interesting. Worse, there's a misattribution-of-arousal effect [1] where the excitement they induce is enough to guarantee upvotes—lots of upvotes. HN moderation tries to counter that effect. We don't get every call right, but I bet you'd be surprised how consistent we are. I'm happy to have conversations about this stuff, but can imagine little more soul-destroying than having to come up with a bureaucratic taxonomy of it and a punctilious rulebook to match. That wouldn't be in HN's spirit anyhow. This place has always been about having a small number of informal principles and interpreting them as best we can. The principles are long established; there's a reason why we change the site guidelines so rarely. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal. I originally wrote "mere proximity" but that was the wrong effect.
djur 11y ago
This is a case where the altered title actually made me click through. If the original title had been retained, I could have just rolled my eyes and not wasted any more time on it. An obnoxious title works for an obnoxious article.
DrScump 11y ago
Your tone implies that dang (or whomever) edits titles willy-nilly to serve some agenda[0]. That's unfair, unless you can present some kind of adverse motive behind such a deed, a motive I fail to see. The other thing to consider before preserving unnecessarily clickbait-y titles is that leaving them intact could motivate enough readers to flag down the article entirely out of distaste for the title, resulting in more severe de facto "censorship" than you seem concerned about here. . [0] excluding, for the moment, arguments about articles from and regarding YC insiders like PG.

phaed 11y ago

God forbid someone get offended by the original title...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

tim333 11y ago

Kind of backing that up I read half way through the article wondering how it was arguing "Don't Configure Applications" as I had not noticed the title edit. Though I may be less observant than most.

d23 11y ago

The title of the original article should ALWAYS be a safe fallback, or perhaps even a requirement.

dang 11y ago
Such a rule would leave HN a sitting duck for misleading titles and linkbait.

dang 11y ago

That level of indignation seems a tad overwrought. The article title is obvious linkbait, so changing it was called for by the HN guidelines. People sometimes mistakenly think that the guidelines ask for the original title to always be used, but that's not so: see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. In this case the procedure we followed is almost a technical one. First, take out the obvious linkbait: "no" and "your". That leaves "I don't want to configure app[s]", and that's misleading, since the article is not about a personal desire but rather a critique in general of applications that require configuration. "Don't configure applications" seemed as close to that as one could get without being either misleading or linkbait. Think of it as dropping a perpendicular from the point of the original title to the HN guideline. But that's not to say we got it right in this case, let alone always get it right. When we do a bad job of a title, a good way to show that is by suggesting a better one, i.e. one that is more accurate and neutral. If you read HN often enough to be mad about title changes, you should be aware of how happily we accept better suggestions from users. Just please don't suggest a title that goes back to breaking the HN guidelines, since that's always the reason why we change them in the first place. By the way, if you think we suck at editing titles, that is likely because you notice the cases you dislike while the others blend into the background. Everyone bats zero if you only count the strikes. I'm going to mark this subthread off topic now. Edit: ok, let's try "A rant about application configuration" instead of "Don't configure applications".

meesterdude 11y ago
First, I don't think it's linkbait. I see plenty of linkbait on HN, but that is not. That is framing it from an individual's perspective, and it is an opinion piece on configuration. You're just reading the words without understanding the actual meaning behind them, and what that conveys to the reader when they look at a HN link. This is what linkbait looks like: watch what these this kid can do with a keyboard! / 10 tips for a slimmer you! (you wont believe number 3!) / I saved $3000 a month on hosting with this one trick Yes, I want you to be editing linkbait titles so they are actually descriptive and helpful to users. I am grateful for that thankless service. But this isn't linkbait. and another post you edited wasn't either. And it's REALLY annoying because in both cases it totally changed the meaning. here is what I would suggest: 1) make it clear in the guidelines what linkbait is. I think that is not established. 2) make it clear when a title has been edited in the UI 3) when a title differs from it's original, cite the original, and explain the reason for the change. 4) only change it if you can really do a better job than the original title; or if someone else suggests something better. (better being: more descriptive of the contents). Err on the side of leaving it alone.
- dang 11y ago
  There are many genres of linkbait. You've mentioned some, but indignant denunciations are another, and so are personal appeals, especially negative ones ("no, you are not foo", "I am not your bar", and so on.) Such formulas are bait because they grab people's attention due to human hard-wiring, not anything interesting. Worse, there's a misattribution-of-arousal effect [1] where the excitement they induce is enough to guarantee upvotes—lots of upvotes. HN moderation tries to counter that effect. We don't get every call right, but I bet you'd be surprised how consistent we are. I'm happy to have conversations about this stuff, but can imagine little more soul-destroying than having to come up with a bureaucratic taxonomy of it and a punctilious rulebook to match. That wouldn't be in HN's spirit anyhow. This place has always been about having a small number of informal principles and interpreting them as best we can. The principles are long established; there's a reason why we change the site guidelines so rarely. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal. I originally wrote "mere proximity" but that was the wrong effect.

djur 11y ago

This is a case where the altered title actually made me click through. If the original title had been retained, I could have just rolled my eyes and not wasted any more time on it. An obnoxious title works for an obnoxious article.

DrScump 11y ago

Your tone implies that dang (or whomever) edits titles willy-nilly to serve some agenda[0]. That's unfair, unless you can present some kind of adverse motive behind such a deed, a motive I fail to see. The other thing to consider before preserving unnecessarily clickbait-y titles is that leaving them intact could motivate enough readers to flag down the article entirely out of distaste for the title, resulting in more severe de facto "censorship" than you seem concerned about here. . [0] excluding, for the moment, arguments about articles from and regarding YC insiders like PG.