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Thanks - really interesting. Take this one, for example: nvidia Drops Support for CUDA on macOS --> CUDA 10.2 is the last release to support macOS --> CUDA

by mft_ 7y ago

Thanks - really interesting. Take this one, for example: nvidia Drops Support for CUDA on macOS --> CUDA 10.2 is the last release to support macOS --> CUDA Toolkit Release Notes The first two titles are quite interesting to me, as a macOS user and a general follower of the tech space (and I'd note neither are sensationalised, or click-bait, from what I can see). The last...? I'm not going to click on that in a million years, as I don't work with CUDA. I'm not totally clear what the moderators' motivations always are, but might it be true that in some cases, maybe they're prioritising strict accuracy over interest, or discoverability? And as a result, their actions are actually diminishing the value of HN as a discussion forum?

kemyd 7y ago
You have the answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617317 "[...] The big no-no is extracting some interesting fact from inside the article and using it as the title"
- Tenoke 7y ago
  Ironically, that's exactly what dang often does, including today.
  - dang 7y ago
    Often? That doesn't seem true to me. Can you give examples?
- mft_ 7y ago
  Thanks - makes sense from a ‘they’re following the rules perspective’, but less so from a ‘enable discovery and subsequent interesting discussion’ perspective. I wonder whether a subtitle giving an editorialised “so what” would help... but that would of course mean twice as much to moderate, and twice as much for people to complain about...
- egeozcan 7y ago
  Interesting, I had forgotten about this rule. Doesn't that encourage blogspam links instead of the source with context?
Tenoke 7y ago
They are prioritizing accuracy and just what's interesting to them, sadly. Whether a thread will get changed or not seems very inconsistent.
- dang 7y ago
  Emphasis on 'seems'. Anything that complicated is hard to do consistently, but the inconsistency is around edge cases. If you're perceiving wild inconsistency, that's probably because the problem is more complicated than it appears. I think most readers would be surprised by how much thought goes into these title edits and how they are based on principles, i.e. the site guidelines and lots of heuristics that derive from them. That's why we're always happy to answer questions about specific cases. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617954
dang 7y ago
You make a good point! but this is a thorny area. When an article's title is completely generic in a way that conceals what's interesting about it, we sometimes don't revert the title. Such cases are covered by the site guidelines as 'misleading'. Other times we do revert it—for example, when a title is generic for what seems to be a creative reason, we'll often put the generic title back out of respect for the author. Or if it's generic in a way that is playful rather than bland. There are hybrid cases too, where we'll leave an editorialized title up because of what you call discoverability until the post is well-established on the front page, then change it at that point. Also, we're responsive to feedback, so when a user makes a good case for us having made the wrong edit, we'll change it. When users disagree with each other, though, as happened here, that gets harder. Btw I wrote about that CUDA title here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618991. We'd normally have left the second-last edit up, but I changed it in response to a user complaint. Had it not been midnight on Saturday I'd have just asked the readers whether the macOS detail was really the single important thing in the article or not, and decided based on that. Your question about moderator motivation doesn't quite land with me though. We're not excluding any of those values, we're just trying to balance them in a good way. What that means is that you're going to get a different answer, often a surprisingly long answer, about specific cases.

by mft_ 7y ago

kemyd 7y ago

You have the answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617317 "[...] The big no-no is extracting some interesting fact from inside the article and using it as the title"

Tenoke 7y ago
Ironically, that's exactly what dang often does, including today.
- dang 7y ago
  Often? That doesn't seem true to me. Can you give examples?
mft_ 7y ago
Thanks - makes sense from a ‘they’re following the rules perspective’, but less so from a ‘enable discovery and subsequent interesting discussion’ perspective. I wonder whether a subtitle giving an editorialised “so what” would help... but that would of course mean twice as much to moderate, and twice as much for people to complain about...
egeozcan 7y ago
Interesting, I had forgotten about this rule. Doesn't that encourage blogspam links instead of the source with context?

Tenoke 7y ago

They are prioritizing accuracy and just what's interesting to them, sadly. Whether a thread will get changed or not seems very inconsistent.

dang 7y ago
Emphasis on 'seems'. Anything that complicated is hard to do consistently, but the inconsistency is around edge cases. If you're perceiving wild inconsistency, that's probably because the problem is more complicated than it appears. I think most readers would be surprised by how much thought goes into these title edits and how they are based on principles, i.e. the site guidelines and lots of heuristics that derive from them. That's why we're always happy to answer questions about specific cases. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617954

dang 7y ago

You make a good point! but this is a thorny area. When an article's title is completely generic in a way that conceals what's interesting about it, we sometimes don't revert the title. Such cases are covered by the site guidelines as 'misleading'. Other times we do revert it—for example, when a title is generic for what seems to be a creative reason, we'll often put the generic title back out of respect for the author. Or if it's generic in a way that is playful rather than bland. There are hybrid cases too, where we'll leave an editorialized title up because of what you call discoverability until the post is well-established on the front page, then change it at that point. Also, we're responsive to feedback, so when a user makes a good case for us having made the wrong edit, we'll change it. When users disagree with each other, though, as happened here, that gets harder. Btw I wrote about that CUDA title here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21618991. We'd normally have left the second-last edit up, but I changed it in response to a user complaint. Had it not been midnight on Saturday I'd have just asked the readers whether the macOS detail was really the single important thing in the article or not, and decided based on that. Your question about moderator motivation doesn't quite land with me though. We're not excluding any of those values, we're just trying to balance them in a good way. What that means is that you're going to get a different answer, often a surprisingly long answer, about specific cases.