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Movie titles according to Hacker News: Man finds wife's head in box. Therapist of boy who sees ghosts is a ghost. Man who killed hero's father is actually his
by matthewowen 10y ago
Movie titles according to Hacker News:
Man finds wife's head in box.
Therapist of boy who sees ghosts is a ghost.
Man who killed hero's father is actually his father.
I get that you want more information, but sometimes getting the information makes reading something less pleasurable. The author here doesn't disclose the detail you're talking about until a third of the way through. Disclosing it in the title fundamentally changes it, and not in a good way.
- fireflash38 10y agoYou happen to get lots of information about books and movies from sources other than just the title. Trailers, synopses on the back/inside sleeve, location in the bookstore, genre, all are meant to give people an idea of what they are getting into, rather than pure mystery. Nobody is asking for the hyperbolic titles you gave, they simply would like to know what they are getting into before clicking on some random link.
- ashark 10y agoThose are the best kinds of headlines for most informational writing. Look at a newspaper from the early 1900s. You can skim just the headlines in a minute and have a pretty good idea what's gone on. EDIT: see: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/New_York_Times_Frontpage_1914-07-29.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/New_York... Basically an unbeatable news consumption interface. Notice even the smaller headlines down the page, which are either independent lower-importance articles or minor articles related to the major ones above. You can read ~15-20 words on each the give you the basics of what happened, very quickly because it's called out in larger type and because the authors were competent and weren't trying to drive clicks, but to deliver value.
- matthewowen 10y agoThat's great, but it's totally irrelevant to the style of writing linked here.
- ashark 10y agoI disagree. Glancing down the headlines on the front page right now, I'd say ~half would be better if they were written in that style.
- matthewowen 10y agoBy 'here', I specifically meant this article. If you don't want to read that style of writing, then I would suggest not clicking links with this style of title.
- ashark 10y agoUnderstood, and I concede that this veered off-topic, hence the talking past one another. And hey, I love "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" as much as the next person.
- jknoepfler 10y agoI disagree. If you were to link a public domain movie (say a documentary) from Youtube, it would suffice to use the title of the movie, with maybe a [Documentery] and (date) stamp. The largely fluff (imo) articles from nautil.us and the like are generally left with the original article title intact. The essay is left to the reader. As for news and technical articles, these are expected to make a clear and concise argument or statement of facts, and the title linking the articles is expected to be accurate and informative. This seems like a pretty fair standard. The forum as a whole is content and audience sensitive, fairly inclusive when it comes to topics, and in my opinion generally gets it right when it comes to adjusting post titles.
- mikeash 10y agoMovies are meant to entertain, and creative titles are part of that. News is meant to inform, and non-creative titles are part of that. Look at any decent newspaper and the headlines will look like your satirical movie titles. HN is much closer to newspapers than movies.
- abalone 10y agoBad analogy. All movies have spoiler-free synopses, e.g. "Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi." And that's exactly what you read before deciding which movie to watch. That's more or less what we're asking for here, in title form.