4 ms·

You basically substituted both the link and the title to a completely different one after long time people discussing that specific link and title. Now half of

• pvg 5y ago
  The original link barely made any sense and many of those comments were comments without the useful context. The root cause here is the iffy submission, not the outdated comments or the change to a more meaningful link.
  • Dylan16807 5y ago
    The original title was "Git 2.30.3 will not operate in non-owned directories" which makes perfect sense to me, and the link provides a good explanation of the security problem. What barely makes any sense about it?
    • pvg 5y ago
      It's a made-up title linking to some random commit. The new link tells you it's a fix for a vulnerability, the details, its CVE, affected platforms and use cases, etc, etc. The other thing doesn't.
      • Dylan16807 5y ago
        The title was "made up", I'll give you that, but it's a pretty good paraphrase of the commit title to add context. The old link also tells you it's a fix for a vulnerability, and also explains how it affects all platforms, and also talks about the use cases etc etc. The only thing it doesn't have is a CVE number, which I don't think is all that important.
        • pvg 5y ago
          The official announcement tells your that there's a vuln, it's considered important enough to break things and that it's out right now. The other thing tells you someone committed something a few weeks ago. The missing context also helps drive a lot of under-informed grumpy threads, rather than bettter-informed grumpy comments/threads. There'd have probably been fewer grumpy threads with the better link.
          • Dylan16807 5y ago
            They both say right at the top that it's a vulnerability, and the old title put the breakage front and center. So I don't know what you mean by missing context.
            • pvg 5y ago
              The context of one is 'someone committed a thing a few weeks ago and it does a thing, according to someone posting to HN'. The context of the other is 'one of the biggest git users on the planet tells you there's git vuln, fix out right now'.
              • Dylan16807 5y ago
                Git itself removing an ability should tell you that it's a big deal even more than "one of the biggest git users on the planet". And again, first line says it's a vulnerability. "it does a thing, according to someone posting to HN" is a big fat strawman.
                • pvg 5y ago
                  It's really more of a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
                • smaudet 5y ago
                  I don't know, it really doesn't sound like a real CVE - maybe add some setting I guess for those worried? Others bring up good points, if your attacker can write to C:\ you probably have other issues. On top of that, it breaks completely valid functionality - someones 'bug' is someone elses feature.
• dang 5y ago
  Yeah, that happens sometimes, but if the second link is more suitable then the discussion eventually adapts for the better. So the only real question is which link is more suitable. One principle I like to use is to assume readers are smart—e.g. in this case, that readers are smart enough to figure out that there are two relevant links to the comments. Of course randomness is also a factor, but it mostly all works out.