4 ms·

-1 to the title change. The current title doesn't convey the situation effectively and imo serves to hide the true nature of the incident. There isn't really an

-1 to the title change. The current title doesn't convey the situation effectively and imo serves to hide the true nature of the incident. There isn't really an article title to source from here, anyway.

dang 10y ago
Here's what I just emailed to a user who asked about the same thing: I think people can pretty well figure out what the story is from the linked page and the HN comments. No? There's a downside to spelling things out completely—it gets people out of the habit of doing their own work to figure things out. Admittedly it can sometimes be helpful for getting a story attention in the first place, but once it's on the front page, there's nearly always a good reason for that, and it's good to expect readers to have to dig a little sometimes to find it. Edit: There's another aspect too. When a title uses language that isn't from the article itself, it typically departs from the article in ways that subtly reframe it into something it isn't. (This is also the case with many media pieces whose headlines are not written by their authors.) For example, the courtroom tone of the submitted title frames this story as a grave breach of trust and leaves out the (I'll be generous) equally important aspect that this is a Reddit shitshow and nothing about it can be taken completely seriously. This is an important effect to avoid, and sticking to language from the article itself is the way to avoid it.
- daodedickinson 10y ago
  >There's a downside to spelling things out completely Are you gonna make every title a puzzle? Or change the title back? Or keep your YC-serving contradiction? I didn't know who "spez" was until this incident! The title should at least say Reddit! This is a terribly mystifying and non-descriptive title and the previous one was completely accurate. EDIT WITH REPLY TO THE FOLLOWING: I only found this thread because I searched "reddit" to see what the discussion was here after reading about this incident in the Yahoo News article. That means I would have passed right over it and not known this article was about Reddit if I had started here because I didn't know what u/spez was yet. And the title you gave this isn't even a title from the content, it's a partial quote of a line from within the body of a comment underneath a page with a completely different title. All the examples you linked were to pages with titles that were then used or lightly trimmed into the title here (possibly with a year added).
  - trymas 10y ago
    Exactly. It's like having having some obscure one word titles on the front page for some company/software/hardware/whatever that I have never heard of and the link content does not make it much more clear either.
    - dang 10y ago
      Some readers want HN to prepare everything for them like mother birds who chew the worms for their babies. That's not how HN works. Here it's good for readers to have to work a little. Ok, here you go: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22work%20a%20little%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
      - nkurz 10y ago
        I hadn't seen it before, but your reaction to 'tl;dr' at the end of that search in the Privacy Badger thread is fantastic (which is to say, it matches my own feelings): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789697. Are you still fighting the good fight, or have you since given in?
        dang 10y ago
        Still fighting! But I restrain myself from commenting about it.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - trymas 10y ago
    Exactly. It's like having having some obscure one word titles on the front page for some company/software/hardware/whatever that I have never heard of and the link content does not make it much more clear either.
  - 10y ago
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Honestly I feel like all this boils down to "I'm friends with spez" and I don't like that. You are suppressing this story. Ironically your moderation in this thread is pretty similar to the behavior on Reddit that's being called out in the first place.
  - dang 10y ago
    You're imagining things you don't like and then not liking them. I'm not sure I can help much, but I'll try. I'm not friends with Steve. I was introduced to him years ago, when we went through YC, and that's it. I'd be shocked if he remembered. Moderators put the story back on the front page, so obviously we weren't trying to suppress it. The thread has over 600 points and over 600 comments now and there is at least one repost nearly as big. I reverted the title because that's standard practice on HN and spent most of my evening in here patiently trying to explain that to you and others. Actually, normally I'd just do a why bother and give people the title they clamour for, but something about this case struck me as ridiculous, and I'm not going to throw years of moderation practice out the window just because Reddit culture had one of its tantrums here. The reason I feel that way has nothing to do with this particular story; it has to do with the principles of this place, which it's my job to protect. (If you must know, I actually kind of like it when Reddit shitshows hit HN. The hivemind usually only has indignation for one forum's management at a time. I feel a little guilty about this, but when the wasps go off in a frenzy and are busy stinging someone else, I can't help but enjoy it that, at least for a little while, they're not stinging me. Also, when Reddit is the story I get to do as the Romans do and joke a little. Just a little though.) No, reverting a title is not "similar" to editing a user's comment. Comments are individual property and titles are shared, so that's like comparing painting a road sign to rewriting someone's diary. A hint that they're not "similar" is that one has been established practice for years while the other is currently provoking multiple rage threads.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      When I referred to "you", I kind of meant YC. Fair point, though. I find all moderator actions inherently distasteful except in the cases of obvious trolling. In this case, though, it's particularly important that posts about i.e. censorship get their fair shake. The title you changed it to didn't really come from anywhere (Reddit comments don't have a title) and fails to convey exactly what's going on. Stepping in to change it like that reduces the weight of the title to the point of being meaningless to lots of people - I'm sure plenty of Reddit users don't even know who spez is.

dang 10y ago

Here's what I just emailed to a user who asked about the same thing: I think people can pretty well figure out what the story is from the linked page and the HN comments. No? There's a downside to spelling things out completely—it gets people out of the habit of doing their own work to figure things out. Admittedly it can sometimes be helpful for getting a story attention in the first place, but once it's on the front page, there's nearly always a good reason for that, and it's good to expect readers to have to dig a little sometimes to find it. Edit: There's another aspect too. When a title uses language that isn't from the article itself, it typically departs from the article in ways that subtly reframe it into something it isn't. (This is also the case with many media pieces whose headlines are not written by their authors.) For example, the courtroom tone of the submitted title frames this story as a grave breach of trust and leaves out the (I'll be generous) equally important aspect that this is a Reddit shitshow and nothing about it can be taken completely seriously. This is an important effect to avoid, and sticking to language from the article itself is the way to avoid it.

daodedickinson 10y ago
>There's a downside to spelling things out completely Are you gonna make every title a puzzle? Or change the title back? Or keep your YC-serving contradiction? I didn't know who "spez" was until this incident! The title should at least say Reddit! This is a terribly mystifying and non-descriptive title and the previous one was completely accurate. EDIT WITH REPLY TO THE FOLLOWING: I only found this thread because I searched "reddit" to see what the discussion was here after reading about this incident in the Yahoo News article. That means I would have passed right over it and not known this article was about Reddit if I had started here because I didn't know what u/spez was yet. And the title you gave this isn't even a title from the content, it's a partial quote of a line from within the body of a comment underneath a page with a completely different title. All the examples you linked were to pages with titles that were then used or lightly trimmed into the title here (possibly with a year added).
- trymas 10y ago
  Exactly. It's like having having some obscure one word titles on the front page for some company/software/hardware/whatever that I have never heard of and the link content does not make it much more clear either.
  - dang 10y ago
    Some readers want HN to prepare everything for them like mother birds who chew the worms for their babies. That's not how HN works. Here it's good for readers to have to work a little. Ok, here you go: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22work%20a%20little%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
    - nkurz 10y ago
      I hadn't seen it before, but your reaction to 'tl;dr' at the end of that search in the Privacy Badger thread is fantastic (which is to say, it matches my own feelings): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789697. Are you still fighting the good fight, or have you since given in?
      - dang 10y ago
        Still fighting! But I restrain myself from commenting about it.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- trymas 10y ago
  Exactly. It's like having having some obscure one word titles on the front page for some company/software/hardware/whatever that I have never heard of and the link content does not make it much more clear either.
- 10y ago
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
Honestly I feel like all this boils down to "I'm friends with spez" and I don't like that. You are suppressing this story. Ironically your moderation in this thread is pretty similar to the behavior on Reddit that's being called out in the first place.
- dang 10y ago
  You're imagining things you don't like and then not liking them. I'm not sure I can help much, but I'll try. I'm not friends with Steve. I was introduced to him years ago, when we went through YC, and that's it. I'd be shocked if he remembered. Moderators put the story back on the front page, so obviously we weren't trying to suppress it. The thread has over 600 points and over 600 comments now and there is at least one repost nearly as big. I reverted the title because that's standard practice on HN and spent most of my evening in here patiently trying to explain that to you and others. Actually, normally I'd just do a why bother and give people the title they clamour for, but something about this case struck me as ridiculous, and I'm not going to throw years of moderation practice out the window just because Reddit culture had one of its tantrums here. The reason I feel that way has nothing to do with this particular story; it has to do with the principles of this place, which it's my job to protect. (If you must know, I actually kind of like it when Reddit shitshows hit HN. The hivemind usually only has indignation for one forum's management at a time. I feel a little guilty about this, but when the wasps go off in a frenzy and are busy stinging someone else, I can't help but enjoy it that, at least for a little while, they're not stinging me. Also, when Reddit is the story I get to do as the Romans do and joke a little. Just a little though.) No, reverting a title is not "similar" to editing a user's comment. Comments are individual property and titles are shared, so that's like comparing painting a road sign to rewriting someone's diary. A hint that they're not "similar" is that one has been established practice for years while the other is currently provoking multiple rage threads.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    When I referred to "you", I kind of meant YC. Fair point, though. I find all moderator actions inherently distasteful except in the cases of obvious trolling. In this case, though, it's particularly important that posts about i.e. censorship get their fair shake. The title you changed it to didn't really come from anywhere (Reddit comments don't have a title) and fails to convey exactly what's going on. Stepping in to change it like that reduces the weight of the title to the point of being meaningless to lots of people - I'm sure plenty of Reddit users don't even know who spez is.