5 ms·

I think the title should include "India", since I don't know if everybody is expected to know that Chennai is in India.

by d3nj4l 6y ago

melling 6y ago
“Hey Siri, where is Chennai” The article also covers it immediately.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  >90% of the people who read the headline won’t click... if you want to inform those >90% of people of a pertenant fact (Apple is starting to produce iPhone 11s in India), make the headline say it. (Only reading the headline isn’t laziness... that’s like saying browsing library bookshelves without reading each book cover-to-cover as you go is laziness...)
  - melling 6y ago
    No, the analogy doesn’t hold because it takes hours to read a book. If you care that much, you can look up the information within seconds. Apple even has this nice feature where you click on a word and it lets you look it up immediately. Telling me that it’s in Chennai, gives me much more information than simply saying India because I know where Chennai is located And even if I didn’t know, i appreciate the more specific information in the title, which implies the missing information. Now that the title says India, I need to exert more effort to find the city. So, does anyone feel like an Ugly American yet? “Don’t tell me it’s in Milan, tell me it’s in Italy”
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      The analogy holds because it’s a mere difference in degree, not in quality. I picked the analogy to exaggerate the degree in order to more clearly illustrate the quality. Although at least this headline is fully honest and not misleading, so kudos there.
ponker 6y ago
Would you say the same about much smaller cities like Paris or Berlin?
- speedgoose 6y ago
  Just to be pedantic, if you think about Paris intra-muros, yes it's smaller but still the same order of magnitude. If you think about Paris with the suburb, it's actually about the same. But the main thing : Paris is much more famous than Chennai.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- machello13 6y ago
  Of course not. Obviously, how well-known a city is to a certain population doesn't depend on its size. There are a dozen cities in China more populous than NYC, but I doubt you could name them all.
  - didgeoridoo 6y ago
    There are two: Shanghai and Beijing. I would have guessed more too, but apparently not.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      There's more than two. New York has about ~8 million pop. From the top of my head I can at least tell you that Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chongqing have over 10 million residents but there's probably more. I think you may have pulled up NYC's metro area population and compared it to the urban population of Chinese cities. The metro population of large Chinese cities is in the 20-40 million.
      - didgeoridoo 6y ago
        It's kind of a question of where you draw the boundaries. Chongqing counts ~30M because its administrative area is the size of Austria. The UN World Urbanization Prospects project [0] tries to establish comparability between nations, and came up with a top 10 of: 1. Tokyo - 37M 2. Delhi - 29M 3. Shanghai - 26M 4. São Paulo - 22M 5. Mexico City - 22M 6. Cairo - 20M 7. Mumbai - 20M 8. Beijing - 20M 9. Dhaka - 20M 10. Osaka - 19M NYC is next at #11 with 19M. However, if you count strictly by "city proper" (as defined by a very wide range of administrative agglomerations), there are indeed THIRTEEN cities in China larger than NYC. I'm not sure this is a hugely useful metric, however, as economically-relevant city boundaries aren't truly represented by administrative lines of control. [0]: https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Highlights.pdf https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Hig...
tech-historian 6y ago
I did include the word India when I submitted it, but somehow it is gone now...
- johnvega 6y ago
  May have been cut off if it was at the end. Perhaps change to "in India" from "near Chennai"
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  FYI, it's usually worth checking the headline that shows up after submission. Sometimes things get altered (sometimes capitalization is changed, words may be removed, etc.). Often the alterations are fine, but sometimes they change it in more ways than you expected. If you edit the submission within the first hour (?) the edited title should remain (unless a moderator comes by later and changes it again).
CydeWeys 6y ago
Just curious, did you know?
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  I'm Indian, so yeah!
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    I think you might be surprised by how many HN readers (including non-Indians) know that Chennai is in India. I'm going down the list of largest Indian cities and it's not until #7 or #8, Ahmedabad and Pune, where we reach cities that I think a good number of people might not know a lot about. So give us more credit! :)
Onewildgamer 6y ago
Now they do

I think the title should include "India", since I don't know if everybody is expected to know that Chennai is in India.

by d3nj4l 6y ago

I think the title should include "India", since I don't know if everybody is expected to know that Chennai is in India.

melling 6y ago

“Hey Siri, where is Chennai” The article also covers it immediately.

Robotbeat 6y ago
>90% of the people who read the headline won’t click... if you want to inform those >90% of people of a pertenant fact (Apple is starting to produce iPhone 11s in India), make the headline say it. (Only reading the headline isn’t laziness... that’s like saying browsing library bookshelves without reading each book cover-to-cover as you go is laziness...)
- melling 6y ago
  No, the analogy doesn’t hold because it takes hours to read a book. If you care that much, you can look up the information within seconds. Apple even has this nice feature where you click on a word and it lets you look it up immediately. Telling me that it’s in Chennai, gives me much more information than simply saying India because I know where Chennai is located And even if I didn’t know, i appreciate the more specific information in the title, which implies the missing information. Now that the title says India, I need to exert more effort to find the city. So, does anyone feel like an Ugly American yet? “Don’t tell me it’s in Milan, tell me it’s in Italy”
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    The analogy holds because it’s a mere difference in degree, not in quality. I picked the analogy to exaggerate the degree in order to more clearly illustrate the quality. Although at least this headline is fully honest and not misleading, so kudos there.

ponker 6y ago

Would you say the same about much smaller cities like Paris or Berlin?

speedgoose 6y ago
Just to be pedantic, if you think about Paris intra-muros, yes it's smaller but still the same order of magnitude. If you think about Paris with the suburb, it's actually about the same. But the main thing : Paris is much more famous than Chennai.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
machello13 6y ago
Of course not. Obviously, how well-known a city is to a certain population doesn't depend on its size. There are a dozen cities in China more populous than NYC, but I doubt you could name them all.
- didgeoridoo 6y ago
  There are two: Shanghai and Beijing. I would have guessed more too, but apparently not.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    There's more than two. New York has about ~8 million pop. From the top of my head I can at least tell you that Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chongqing have over 10 million residents but there's probably more. I think you may have pulled up NYC's metro area population and compared it to the urban population of Chinese cities. The metro population of large Chinese cities is in the 20-40 million.
    - didgeoridoo 6y ago
      It's kind of a question of where you draw the boundaries. Chongqing counts ~30M because its administrative area is the size of Austria. The UN World Urbanization Prospects project [0] tries to establish comparability between nations, and came up with a top 10 of: 1. Tokyo - 37M 2. Delhi - 29M 3. Shanghai - 26M 4. São Paulo - 22M 5. Mexico City - 22M 6. Cairo - 20M 7. Mumbai - 20M 8. Beijing - 20M 9. Dhaka - 20M 10. Osaka - 19M NYC is next at #11 with 19M. However, if you count strictly by "city proper" (as defined by a very wide range of administrative agglomerations), there are indeed THIRTEEN cities in China larger than NYC. I'm not sure this is a hugely useful metric, however, as economically-relevant city boundaries aren't truly represented by administrative lines of control. [0]: https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Highlights.pdf https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Hig...

tech-historian 6y ago

I did include the word India when I submitted it, but somehow it is gone now...

johnvega 6y ago
May have been cut off if it was at the end. Perhaps change to "in India" from "near Chennai"
Jtsummers 6y ago
FYI, it's usually worth checking the headline that shows up after submission. Sometimes things get altered (sometimes capitalization is changed, words may be removed, etc.). Often the alterations are fine, but sometimes they change it in more ways than you expected. If you edit the submission within the first hour (?) the edited title should remain (unless a moderator comes by later and changes it again).

CydeWeys 6y ago

Just curious, did you know?

d3nj4l 6y ago
I'm Indian, so yeah!
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  I think you might be surprised by how many HN readers (including non-Indians) know that Chennai is in India. I'm going down the list of largest Indian cities and it's not until #7 or #8, Ahmedabad and Pune, where we reach cities that I think a good number of people might not know a lot about. So give us more credit! :)

Onewildgamer 6y ago

Now they do