4 ms·

HN's headline style auto-formatter is getting weirder. Are all leading numbers removed now? Would "3,700 expected to be laid off from Twitter" become "expected

• tpmoney 4y ago
  I wonder if it’s just programmed to look for clickbait listicle numbers like 5 secrets your doctor doesn’t want you to know 10 ways to grow muscle without exercising And that sort of thing. Maybe it’s even just looking for any leading number under 15 or something like that. I’d expect out of any random assortment of modern day headlines, most that start with a low number are clickbait nonsense, where something that starts with a number in the hundreds or thousands is likely to be a real article
• Jtsummers 4y ago
  This isn't "getting weirder", this has been the case for close to a decade if not more. HN has long removed the numbers. The good news is that the submitter has time (though in this case I think it's expired) to edit headlines for submissions, I think it's the same time window as comment editing, 1.5-2 hours. When you submit a headline and it's altered by HN in a meaningful way, you can change it back to the original.