8 ms·

Can people please choose an appropriate title when posting. "You can change your number" makes sense in the context of signal.org but makes little sense on the

Can people please choose an appropriate title when posting. "You can change your number" makes sense in the context of signal.org but makes little sense on the front page of HN. The RSS feed doesn't even include the domain for context.

nsajko 5y ago
HN guidelines forbid changing the title. I proposed changing this once, but the post didn't get traction. There was more traction for that years ago though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300126
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- slyall 5y ago
  I often change titles on submissions. Making them shorter for instance. I also do change some to provide more context that the original source didn't. An article has only 15 minutes in /new to attract enough votes. Sticking with a crappy title nobody will click on wastes everyone's time. Obviously don't go full clickbaity. Sometimes the HN mods change them back.
- dang 5y ago
  > HN guidelines do not forbid changing the title. It's more nuanced than that. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
saurik 5y ago
This website has an extremely awkward policy about titles that makes it so if you don't use the original title people get angry. The policy though just doesn't make sense, sadly, as the concept of titles is audience-specific (and even movies or books, which might feel more organized, sometimes have different audiences in different markets). FWIW, I did connect it together as I saw "(signal.org)" and that was sufficient for me in this specific case.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  If the original title is too vague, hyperbolic or long, i will use a better title from another website. But normally it's just confusing for people who expect one headline, to find a different one. Generally company blog headlines fall into the category of "extremely vague" and need improving.
- dang 5y ago
  It feels like the policy doesn't make sense because people only notice the cases they don't like. The cases where it works just fine, which are the vast majority, go unnoticed. That's by design, because it keeps things relatively smooth and happy, but it has this weird side effect that the annoyance cases build up like mercury in the 'policy' corner of the brain. Worst yet, the title edits that would annoy people if HN had a different policy (and they would be legion) go uncounted because we don't allow them to happen in the first place. Such a regime would be much less smooth, because for each title edit you (i.e. anyone) happened to agree with, there would be a lot more rubbing you the wrong way. The fundamental principle here is that on HN, being the one to submit an article confers no special right to interpret or frame it for others. We want the articles to speak for themselves, and we want the front page to be as accurate and neutral as possible ('bookish', to use PG's old word for this). Misleading titles and clickbait titles get in the way of that, so the HN guidelines ask submitters to change those. Otherwise not. Threads are so sensitive to initial conditions that the power to rewrite a title is literally the power to reframe the entire discussion, and therefore control it. On HN, we want the author of the article (or creator of a project) to have that power, not the submitter. That really is fundamental—it's the reason why HN's front page is the way it is, and therefore the reason why HN is the way it is. To change it would be to mess with the DNA of this place and would soon lead to a completely different forum. Maybe a good forum, but not the kind that HN is trying to be. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20title%20special%20right&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - 5y ago
staticassertion 5y ago
signal.org is displayed right next to the title.
- SecurityLagoon 5y ago
  Not on the RSS feed without me doing some jiggery to extract it from the link and render it in my reader somehow. But overall this isn't the worst example because it is on their own domain - often it'll be on a medium domain or something that provides no useful context.
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Sounds like an RSS feed issue.
  - samatman 5y ago
    I'm fairly sure that medium is treated specially, along with github, twitter, substack, and a few others, in that subdomains are displayed for those platforms. Certainly this list isn't complete, and just as surely the moderators are open to adding to that list as contenders enter the ring.
dang 5y ago
signal.org is part of the context of the title, since it's displayed right next to it. Therefore, by your argument (which I think is correct), the title does make sense on the front page of HN.

nsajko 5y ago

HN guidelines forbid changing the title. I proposed changing this once, but the post didn't get traction. There was more traction for that years ago though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300126

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
slyall 5y ago
I often change titles on submissions. Making them shorter for instance. I also do change some to provide more context that the original source didn't. An article has only 15 minutes in /new to attract enough votes. Sticking with a crappy title nobody will click on wastes everyone's time. Obviously don't go full clickbaity. Sometimes the HN mods change them back.
dang 5y ago
> HN guidelines do not forbid changing the title. It's more nuanced than that. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

saurik 5y ago

This website has an extremely awkward policy about titles that makes it so if you don't use the original title people get angry. The policy though just doesn't make sense, sadly, as the concept of titles is audience-specific (and even movies or books, which might feel more organized, sometimes have different audiences in different markets). FWIW, I did connect it together as I saw "(signal.org)" and that was sufficient for me in this specific case.

aspenmayer 5y ago
FridayoLeary 5y ago
If the original title is too vague, hyperbolic or long, i will use a better title from another website. But normally it's just confusing for people who expect one headline, to find a different one. Generally company blog headlines fall into the category of "extremely vague" and need improving.
dang 5y ago
It feels like the policy doesn't make sense because people only notice the cases they don't like. The cases where it works just fine, which are the vast majority, go unnoticed. That's by design, because it keeps things relatively smooth and happy, but it has this weird side effect that the annoyance cases build up like mercury in the 'policy' corner of the brain. Worst yet, the title edits that would annoy people if HN had a different policy (and they would be legion) go uncounted because we don't allow them to happen in the first place. Such a regime would be much less smooth, because for each title edit you (i.e. anyone) happened to agree with, there would be a lot more rubbing you the wrong way. The fundamental principle here is that on HN, being the one to submit an article confers no special right to interpret or frame it for others. We want the articles to speak for themselves, and we want the front page to be as accurate and neutral as possible ('bookish', to use PG's old word for this). Misleading titles and clickbait titles get in the way of that, so the HN guidelines ask submitters to change those. Otherwise not. Threads are so sensitive to initial conditions that the power to rewrite a title is literally the power to reframe the entire discussion, and therefore control it. On HN, we want the author of the article (or creator of a project) to have that power, not the submitter. That really is fundamental—it's the reason why HN's front page is the way it is, and therefore the reason why HN is the way it is. To change it would be to mess with the DNA of this place and would soon lead to a completely different forum. Maybe a good forum, but not the kind that HN is trying to be. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20title%20special%20right&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- 5y ago

staticassertion 5y ago

signal.org is displayed right next to the title.

SecurityLagoon 5y ago
Not on the RSS feed without me doing some jiggery to extract it from the link and render it in my reader somehow. But overall this isn't the worst example because it is on their own domain - often it'll be on a medium domain or something that provides no useful context.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Sounds like an RSS feed issue.
- samatman 5y ago
  I'm fairly sure that medium is treated specially, along with github, twitter, substack, and a few others, in that subdomains are displayed for those platforms. Certainly this list isn't complete, and just as surely the moderators are open to adding to that list as contenders enter the ring.

dang 5y ago

signal.org is part of the context of the title, since it's displayed right next to it. Therefore, by your argument (which I think is correct), the title does make sense on the front page of HN.