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Um, what's the deal with editing the headline? The original asserts a statement. It may or may not be true. But why would it benefit HN readers to turn this ass
by tom_mellior 6y ago
Um, what's the deal with editing the headline? The original asserts a statement. It may or may not be true. But why would it benefit HN readers to turn this assertion into a question?
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agono deal - the submission bookmarklet JS[1] automatically fills in the title from the html meta: <title>Is Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted Recycling To Sell More Plastic : NPR</title> [1] javascript:window.location=%22https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURIComponent(document.location)+%22&t=%22+encodeURIComponent(document.title) https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURICompo...
- tom_mellior 6y agoAh thanks, that explains it. So it's partly NPR's fault for using a title tag different from the headline. I guess I was also confused because I think I had also seen the duplicate submission that used the headline, not the title tag, so I though this one was changed. But that bookmarklet is also at fault, since at the minimum submissions are required to strip out the site's name if it occurs in the title, so leaving in the ": NPR" bit is a bug in this automated approach. So some amount of human post-processing will always be needed. And while submissions are expected to keep the original title, there is also a rule that egregious clickbait like the question in the title tag should be removed (which has now been done!).