4 ms·

I don't really like the title either, but in this case it is the actual title from the source. Despite my reservations about the title, I think it was worth a

by curtis 10y ago

I don't really like the title either, but in this case it is the actual title from the source. Despite my reservations about the title, I think it was worth a read, and I upvoted it. Also, I'm not sure what a better title should be, and I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect the submitter to think up a better one when submitting. In fact changing the title from the source is kind of frowned upon on this site.

x1798DE 10y ago
> In fact changing the title from the source is kind of frowned upon on this site. I think it's perfectly acceptable to change clickbait headlines to simple factual ones. In this case something like, "First hand account of a case worker in the Salvation Army disaster recovery center following 9/11". Or even just the existing headline without the "The worst part was 6 months later".
- curtis 10y ago
  I pretty frequently edit headlines when I submit links. In fact I think it would have been better if this submitter had in fact done so. I just think it's unreasonable in general to expect submitters to do this. It takes time and most submissions will never make it anywhere near the front page. If it does make it to the front page, and the title is egregious in some way, one of the mods may re-title it anyway.
- dang 10y ago
  > I think it's perfectly acceptable to change clickbait headlines to simple factual ones. Not only acceptable, but explicitly called for by https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. When we do change a title we try to use representative language from the article itself, rather than making up a completely new one. In the above case we've taken the linkbait bits out of the original title and reordered the result to make it grammatical.
dang 10y ago
The guidelines actually say "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" [emphasis added]. So they do call for changing the title, but only to make it less misleading or linkbait.

by curtis 10y ago

x1798DE 10y ago

> In fact changing the title from the source is kind of frowned upon on this site. I think it's perfectly acceptable to change clickbait headlines to simple factual ones. In this case something like, "First hand account of a case worker in the Salvation Army disaster recovery center following 9/11". Or even just the existing headline without the "The worst part was 6 months later".

curtis 10y ago
I pretty frequently edit headlines when I submit links. In fact I think it would have been better if this submitter had in fact done so. I just think it's unreasonable in general to expect submitters to do this. It takes time and most submissions will never make it anywhere near the front page. If it does make it to the front page, and the title is egregious in some way, one of the mods may re-title it anyway.
dang 10y ago
> I think it's perfectly acceptable to change clickbait headlines to simple factual ones. Not only acceptable, but explicitly called for by https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. When we do change a title we try to use representative language from the article itself, rather than making up a completely new one. In the above case we've taken the linkbait bits out of the original title and reordered the result to make it grammatical.

dang 10y ago

The guidelines actually say "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" [emphasis added]. So they do call for changing the title, but only to make it less misleading or linkbait.