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> The mantra on HN is that ideas matter and that HN wants to deemphasize names and avoid promoting pieces being posted merely because they are about some celebr

> The mantra on HN is that ideas matter and that HN wants to deemphasize names and avoid promoting pieces being posted merely because they are about some celebrity. I think these articles fail that test. I disagree. Whatever you think about the quality of his arguments, the fact that the president of Y Combinator is writing about UBI makes it worth discussing for those who care about the topic, because he has significantly more leverage to affect things than most other people writing about it. Similarly, I'd be more interested in reading a poorly conceived piece on nuclear war written by Donald Trump than a brilliantly-crafted article from my nephew.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Dan Gackle, moderator of HN: For the most part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I learned from PG for keeping the focus on the content. ---- Name recognition seems to encourage reflexive upvoting, which is one reason we often take names out of titles. We've removed "Alan Kay" from this one. (Nothing personal—we're fans.) ---- But mostly we take the author's/presenter's name out of titles, in keeping with HN's emphasis on content over personalities. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20names%20titles&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20names%20titles&sort=byP...
- csallen 9y ago
  I don't have any qualms around taking names out of titles.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    And yet here we are discussing an article with Sam Altman's name in the title, as is rather often the case on the topic of UBI, and you essentially arguing that this is a good thing.
    - csallen 9y ago
      I suspect we'd be discussing this article even if Sam Altman's name wasn't in the title. EDIT: Also, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily a good thing that we're discussing this. Moreso, my point is that the value of a piece of writing isn't completely disconnected from who wrote it, nor should it be.
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DoreenMichele 9y ago

Dan Gackle, moderator of HN: For the most part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I learned from PG for keeping the focus on the content. ---- Name recognition seems to encourage reflexive upvoting, which is one reason we often take names out of titles. We've removed "Alan Kay" from this one. (Nothing personal—we're fans.) ---- But mostly we take the author's/presenter's name out of titles, in keeping with HN's emphasis on content over personalities. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20names%20titles&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20names%20titles&sort=byP...

csallen 9y ago
I don't have any qualms around taking names out of titles.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  And yet here we are discussing an article with Sam Altman's name in the title, as is rather often the case on the topic of UBI, and you essentially arguing that this is a good thing.
  - csallen 9y ago
    I suspect we'd be discussing this article even if Sam Altman's name wasn't in the title. EDIT: Also, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily a good thing that we're discussing this. Moreso, my point is that the value of a piece of writing isn't completely disconnected from who wrote it, nor should it be.

deleted 9y ago

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