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It's not 'bizarre', it's unfortunate at best. The piece has a title that isn't very descriptive, and HN policy biases towards transparent link-sharing with no e
by mseebach 10y ago
It's not 'bizarre', it's unfortunate at best. The piece has a title that isn't very descriptive, and HN policy biases towards transparent link-sharing with no editorialising. No policy is perfect, and it has some casualties, this being one of them. But it has to be weighed against the (IMO) very strong general case benefits of avoiding editorialising.
- c3534l 10y agoThe policy is a good policy 90% of the time. But there are edge cases where the author writes a terrible headline and then we're also stuck with a terrible headline.
- pvg 10y agoThat's not the case. Truly terrible titles - ones that are outright misleading or clickbait get rewritten. "I can't instantly tell what this thing is about from the title" is not really a forum-damaging problem.
- dang 10y agoThis one is not a "terrible headline". The author is emphasizing what matters to him about a profound, life-altering experience. We're supposed to overwrite that because internet readers (all of us) are addicted to instant gratification? Nope, that's not how HN works. We want reflective responses, not reflexive ones, those take a bit longer and that's good. If the difference between 1 second and 10 seconds is critical to you (I don't mean you personally, of course, but any reader), HN may not be the website you're looking for. Making a little effort, poking around a little, figuring things out: those are some of the qualities we want to engage here. I could go on about this for hours. Of all the things that make HN different and matter most, this is the one I'm surest of. However, after yesterday I think a better use of resources would be to go back to working on making HN faster. There the difference between 1 and 10 seconds really does matter.