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Meta HN question (I'm sorry if this is inappropriate). Normally, in HN "{Title} ({Year})" signals that the article is written in "Year". So when I read the titl
by gnulinux 7y ago
Meta HN question (I'm sorry if this is inappropriate). Normally, in HN "{Title} ({Year})" signals that the article is written in "Year". So when I read the title, I thought the article will be from 1890, but then realized the article is named "CS Alert (1890)". In this case looks like "(1890)" is added to the title to disambiguate it from other "CS Alert"s i.e.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_Alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_Alert
I initially thought it would make more sense to name this article as "CS Alert" since it wouldn't matter as much as Wikipedia if the title is ambiguous. But then I disagreed with myself since other "CS Alert"s are all named of the form "CS Alert ({Year})" so it could still be ambiguous even in HN context. Maybe the title could editorialized to "CS Alert 1890" or "CS Alert, 1890" or something, but I understand that HN rules are against editorializing titles. It's an interesting problem.
- rmbryan 7y agoMaybe wikipedia should be exempt from the dating rule, since, what's the publication date on a wikipedia entry?
- 0xffff2 7y agoI think the problem here is that the literal string "(1890)" is part of the original title.
- Stratoscope 7y agoThis article is a great example of where the submitter should improve the title. As it is, I thought "Was there a Computer Science Alert in 1890?" There's nothing wrong with an informative title here. If it were me, I would write: The cable-laying and cable-cutting ship CS Alert That does what a good headline should do: give a taste of the story without venturing into clickbait territory.