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Well, perhaps you can explain why you changed the title. What did you find unsatisfactory about it? Was it that you wanted to attract more clicks? Did you want

Well, perhaps you can explain why you changed the title. What did you find unsatisfactory about it? Was it that you wanted to attract more clicks? Did you want to express a personal opinion? Did you think it did a poor job of introducing the text?

Jun8 16y ago
I sense an unwarranted hostility in your comments, which puzzle me. There's no rule that by default story titles have be used verbatim, only that they should not be changed gratuitously. In fact, if you look at past submissions to HN, you see that many times the title was changed by the submitter. I see no problem in having titles reflect personal opinion; of course, this should not be overdone. NYT, being a newspaper has to impose limits on their titles, so as to serve the common denominator. when posting to HN, I'm not bound by the same rules as NYT. In this particular case NYT's title is too weak, as evidenced by the commentators, i.e. quite everyone agrees this is bowdlerizing Twain's text. P.S. Thinking of hand crafting submission titles to attract more clicks, i.e. karma whoring, is laughable, I'm too old to waste my precious time on such tricks :-)
- raganwald 16y ago
  I'm going to let you go now. If you're feeling hostility, I suggest that the very best thing is to just walk away and forget about it. It's a title. Of a submission. To a rather ephemeral web site. There is absolutely zero emotional investment on my part. I have certain opinions about what is or isn't positive for HN the site, but at no time would I ever consider them more important than your personal enjoyment and security.
  - Jun8 16y ago
    :-) I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. What I meant was your comments (i.e. your immediate call for the editors to change the title, rather than asking the submitter to do it, and the others) seem to address the whole title change issue "from the height of an unwritten book". You're right, when this impedance mismatch occurs in newsgroups it's best to let it go. That being said, I found our small discussion less than satisfactory. Obviously you have been on HN much longer than I am (more than three times as long), so I respect your intuition about HN etiquette. However, in this case you seemed to have certain assumptions about my intentions (more clicks, etc.) to editorialize the title and you never discussed why you think the new title is so misleading for the story. As for the idea of bowdlerizing Twain, the idea is generating such a backlash (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/l07twain.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/l07twain.html, Google returns 25K hits from past month for "twain bowdlerize") that I think they are going to backpedal on this one. I hope.
    - raganwald 16y ago
      I aso hope that they backpedal, and do so swiftly. For a very long time I loved a children's librarian from Bermuda. She taught me a great deal about liberty and censorship. She strongly believed that some books should not be carried in a children's library. She also strongly believed that books should not be revised: Either they were fit for the library or not. I haven't asked her, but I suspect that she is fine with the original, and if she wasn't, she wouldn't be fine with the revision either.

Jun8 16y ago

I sense an unwarranted hostility in your comments, which puzzle me. There's no rule that by default story titles have be used verbatim, only that they should not be changed gratuitously. In fact, if you look at past submissions to HN, you see that many times the title was changed by the submitter. I see no problem in having titles reflect personal opinion; of course, this should not be overdone. NYT, being a newspaper has to impose limits on their titles, so as to serve the common denominator. when posting to HN, I'm not bound by the same rules as NYT. In this particular case NYT's title is too weak, as evidenced by the commentators, i.e. quite everyone agrees this is bowdlerizing Twain's text. P.S. Thinking of hand crafting submission titles to attract more clicks, i.e. karma whoring, is laughable, I'm too old to waste my precious time on such tricks :-)

raganwald 16y ago
I'm going to let you go now. If you're feeling hostility, I suggest that the very best thing is to just walk away and forget about it. It's a title. Of a submission. To a rather ephemeral web site. There is absolutely zero emotional investment on my part. I have certain opinions about what is or isn't positive for HN the site, but at no time would I ever consider them more important than your personal enjoyment and security.
- Jun8 16y ago
  :-) I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. What I meant was your comments (i.e. your immediate call for the editors to change the title, rather than asking the submitter to do it, and the others) seem to address the whole title change issue "from the height of an unwritten book". You're right, when this impedance mismatch occurs in newsgroups it's best to let it go. That being said, I found our small discussion less than satisfactory. Obviously you have been on HN much longer than I am (more than three times as long), so I respect your intuition about HN etiquette. However, in this case you seemed to have certain assumptions about my intentions (more clicks, etc.) to editorialize the title and you never discussed why you think the new title is so misleading for the story. As for the idea of bowdlerizing Twain, the idea is generating such a backlash (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/l07twain.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/l07twain.html, Google returns 25K hits from past month for "twain bowdlerize") that I think they are going to backpedal on this one. I hope.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    I aso hope that they backpedal, and do so swiftly. For a very long time I loved a children's librarian from Bermuda. She taught me a great deal about liberty and censorship. She strongly believed that some books should not be carried in a children's library. She also strongly believed that books should not be revised: Either they were fit for the library or not. I haven't asked her, but I suspect that she is fine with the original, and if she wasn't, she wouldn't be fine with the revision either.