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The reason people seem to be in this thread is because of the tidbit of information about Trello, not because Atlassian's had a "solid Q2". The new title is not

The reason people seem to be in this thread is because of the tidbit of information about Trello, not because Atlassian's had a "solid Q2". The new title is not very discussion worthy. I appreciate HN has policies around editorialization but it seems titles that better tell the story HNers would be interested in are changed to more opaque ones on a frequent basis. (Admittedly I'd have dropped the "only".)

openmosix 10y ago
Agreed, I would have skipped this news/headline if it wasn't for the Trello bit.
sctb 10y ago
I appreciate this thoughtful comment, but this is more like DNA than policy. Hacker News is emphatically focused on content. Titles are not the things that should be discussion-worthy, content is. And titles are subservient to the content they aim to represent, and need to do so as accurately as possible. Original titles are often best suited for this. It's not up to the submitter to decide what readers might find interesting, especially when doing so misrepresents what the content actually is. It's not fair to mislead readers with a title about Trello when the article is primarily about Atlassian. But all is not lost: if there's a particular tidbit that the submitter has found interesting, the perfect place to bring that up is in the comment thread.
- petercooper 10y ago
  I appreciate this thoughtful comment, but this is more like DNA than policy. I considered it policy because it has changed. Up until about two years ago, it was okay to provide context in titles as long as they weren't "over-editorialized" - I believe this word was actually used in the guidelines document. And titles are subservient to the content they aim to represent, and need to do so as accurately as possible. Titles are an unavoidable and valuable gateway to content because a reader's decision to read rests upon them. For 2 hours today there was an item just titled "Joxa" on the front page that meant nothing. It was basically clickbait because HN junkies like me had to click on it to work out what it meant. You've since edited it, yet I frequently see titles here being edited the other way. It's not fair to mislead readers with a title about Trello when the article is primarily about Atlassian. What is the best, HN-friendly approach to highlighting more interesting "background" stories, such as this? Would it have been for someone to write their own blog post quoting the original story? This sort of thing has sometimes been shot down here as "blogspam" (although I'm fine with it).
  - sctb 10y ago
    On reflection, this seems a fair point; we've restored the submitted title (removing "only" as suggested) from “Atlassian's customer roster swells, delivers solid Q2”. If the original title weren't such droning PR-speak there might be a stronger case for sticking to the rule, especially since the article is particularly light on Trello details, but it's close enough.

openmosix 10y ago

Agreed, I would have skipped this news/headline if it wasn't for the Trello bit.

sctb 10y ago

I appreciate this thoughtful comment, but this is more like DNA than policy. Hacker News is emphatically focused on content. Titles are not the things that should be discussion-worthy, content is. And titles are subservient to the content they aim to represent, and need to do so as accurately as possible. Original titles are often best suited for this. It's not up to the submitter to decide what readers might find interesting, especially when doing so misrepresents what the content actually is. It's not fair to mislead readers with a title about Trello when the article is primarily about Atlassian. But all is not lost: if there's a particular tidbit that the submitter has found interesting, the perfect place to bring that up is in the comment thread.

petercooper 10y ago
I appreciate this thoughtful comment, but this is more like DNA than policy. I considered it policy because it has changed. Up until about two years ago, it was okay to provide context in titles as long as they weren't "over-editorialized" - I believe this word was actually used in the guidelines document. And titles are subservient to the content they aim to represent, and need to do so as accurately as possible. Titles are an unavoidable and valuable gateway to content because a reader's decision to read rests upon them. For 2 hours today there was an item just titled "Joxa" on the front page that meant nothing. It was basically clickbait because HN junkies like me had to click on it to work out what it meant. You've since edited it, yet I frequently see titles here being edited the other way. It's not fair to mislead readers with a title about Trello when the article is primarily about Atlassian. What is the best, HN-friendly approach to highlighting more interesting "background" stories, such as this? Would it have been for someone to write their own blog post quoting the original story? This sort of thing has sometimes been shot down here as "blogspam" (although I'm fine with it).
- sctb 10y ago
  On reflection, this seems a fair point; we've restored the submitted title (removing "only" as suggested) from “Atlassian's customer roster swells, delivers solid Q2”. If the original title weren't such droning PR-speak there might be a stronger case for sticking to the rule, especially since the article is particularly light on Trello details, but it's close enough.