Sorry about the negativity. I actually didn't read your post that made it to the same page for the same reason (overly sensational title). If you look at Digg

Sorry about the negativity. I actually didn't read your post that made it to the same page for the same reason (overly sensational title). If you look at Digg or Reddit they are essentially just bit lists of overly sensational titles. One thing I like about HN is that we manage to mostly avoid that... and titles are generally fairly informative. I typically only downvote/flag stories that have overly sensational titles, b/c I view them as bait for the more cursory of readers, who don't generally make thoughtful comments b/c their attention span is calibrated toward sensational, dopamine trigger words. I've found that if a post makes it to the HN front page it's generally quality reading, so a sensational title actually provides a signal not to read it.