4 ms·

Come on, now, why was the title changed? The originally submitted title, "Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car," is the title of the a

Come on, now, why was the title changed? The originally submitted title, "Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car," is the title of the article, and it's true, not click bait at all.

dang 10y ago
Because the 'poor people' angle is a red herring and thus arguably misleading, and perhaps clickbait as well since it makes the story more sensational. Those are the two reasons why titles should be changed on HN, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The article's actual argument is that free parking forces people who don't drive to subsidize those who do. That's a sentence from the article, so it could make a legit title, but in this case we picked another representative sentence, from the article's second paragraph. Either of those seems fine to me. Edit: ok, since we got other complaints and this is a borderline call anyhow, we've restored the "Poor people..." title.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Sorry, but no. Although the sequence of words "You may pay for the cost of parking...." does appear in the article, it is at best a trite gloss of the article's thesis. And as for the 'poor people' angle, the article runs 426 words according to the word count facility in OpenOffice Writer, of which ~100 are devoted to the effects on the poor. The article's title is neither misleading nor clickbait.
- upofadown 10y ago
  But the poor people thing is the main thrust of the article. >"People who are too poor to own a car," Shoup writes in the University of California's ACCESS Magazine, "pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store." You could argue that the article is in itself overly sensational but the title is accurate.

4 ms·

Come on, now, why was the title changed? The originally submitted title, "Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car," is the title of the a

by pmiller2 10y ago

dang 10y ago
Because the 'poor people' angle is a red herring and thus arguably misleading, and perhaps clickbait as well since it makes the story more sensational. Those are the two reasons why titles should be changed on HN, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The article's actual argument is that free parking forces people who don't drive to subsidize those who do. That's a sentence from the article, so it could make a legit title, but in this case we picked another representative sentence, from the article's second paragraph. Either of those seems fine to me. Edit: ok, since we got other complaints and this is a borderline call anyhow, we've restored the "Poor people..." title.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Sorry, but no. Although the sequence of words "You may pay for the cost of parking...." does appear in the article, it is at best a trite gloss of the article's thesis. And as for the 'poor people' angle, the article runs 426 words according to the word count facility in OpenOffice Writer, of which ~100 are devoted to the effects on the poor. The article's title is neither misleading nor clickbait.
- upofadown 10y ago
  But the poor people thing is the main thrust of the article. >"People who are too poor to own a car," Shoup writes in the University of California's ACCESS Magazine, "pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store." You could argue that the article is in itself overly sensational but the title is accurate.