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And boo, incidentally, to whomever changed the HN title - from the most memorably evocative title this site has ever seen to one of the blandest.
by fenomas 3y ago
And boo, incidentally, to whomever changed the HN title - from the most memorably evocative title this site has ever seen to one of the blandest.
- etrevino 3y agoWhat was it? I arrived too late.
- fenomas 3y agoSorry, HN previously had TFA's actual title - "Who Lusts for Certainty Lusts for Lies".
- etrevino 3y agolol, that's pretty good, I agree with you.
- djsavvy 3y agoLooks like it's been changed back! What was the "bland" title in the middle?
- Intralexical 3y ago"Google Ngram Viewer n-grams are wrong".
- brookst 3y agoOuch. Glad they reverted. Dec 7, 1941: “200,000 tons of steel relocated to sea floor”
- scubbo 3y agoI, uhhhh.....I would like to know what TFA is meant to stand for, because I assume it is not "the ſucking article", but that was my first thought. Maybe "featured"? Google is only giving me "Teach For America" or "Trade Facilitation Agreement".
- iudqnolq 3y agoit is the fucking article. or "featured" if you're feeling classy.
- mjochim 3y agoI like to read it as The Fine Article.
- idrios 3y agoThis is the kind of question that doesnt need to be answered with certainty. "The fucking article" is definitely the most fun interpretation of "TFA".
- klyrs 3y agoDoes "fornicating" sound more polite to you?
- scubbo 3y agoIt does - but note that I made no mention of disapproving of impoliteness!
- terr-dav 3y agoIf TFA is derived from RTFA (itself I assume derived from RTFM), then "the fucking article" seems the most correct, official, and proper.
- xp84 3y agoI feel that the presence of this term here means that HN is the successor to the venerable Slashdot. Kind of comforting that there’s a straight line from the site that I spent so much time on 20 years ago, to this one.
- dredmorbius 3y ago"The (Fine|Fucking) Article". As others have noted, derived from RTFA (read TFA), which comes from RTFM (read the fine manual). I don't know if RTFA/TFA originated at Slashdot, but both were certainly heavily used there, as noted in ... this fine Wikipedia article: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot>
- teachrdan 3y agoDo we ever find out who came up with this line originally? I'd like to be able to quote it (with attribution) in the future. It sounds like an old timey quote, but a cursory Google search turns up nothing. I can't even see who wrote the article!
- ComputerGuru 3y agoI personally feel like more people will click with this new title. The old one was far too vague and ambiguous for a news aggregation site. I thought the old title would be about scientific papers and trying too hard to get definitive answers out of them.
- fenomas 3y agoHorses for courses, but to me the original title was the forest and the stuff about Ngrams was the trees. As such I found TFA interesting, even though I have no interest in Ngrams or whether they're correct (which is why I definitely would not have clicked on the current title).
- setgree 3y agoadding "horses for courses" to my lexicon, TY :)
- dredmorbius 3y agoThe title and site reward those who'd click through on the original rather than the bland substitute.
- wolverine876 3y agoHN is not a news aggregation site. It's a site for intellectual curiosity.
- chromoblob 3y ago> HN is not a news aggregation site. Probably not mainly, but isn't this one of its functions?
- wolverine876 3y agoI think we're getting into matters of definition. Do I count on HN to stay aware of current events? No; it would be a very incomplete picture. Much of HN has nothing to do with current events.
- dahart 3y agoThe article title is certainly provocative, yes, and that’s the problem. Do you want clickbait titles? The article’s title is a combination of a platitude, an inaccurate and/or irrelevant statement, and an implied inflammatory accusation. Swapping the title for the more accurate more informational less provocative first line is much better for me, but maybe true that not flinging around the word “lies” could result in fewer clicks.
- fenomas 3y agoI don't think "Ngrams are wrong" is what TFA is about. The author isn't an expert on Ngrams and he's not sharing any new information about them; what he's really talking about is how data about language is unreliable, and why Ngram images are on his site even though he knows they're flawed. Personally, I found the original title truer to the article than the current one.
- zem 3y agothe word "clickbait" is flung around way too readily these days. a good title is supposed to make you want to read the article, and at its best it is an artistic flourish that enhances the overall piece. and personally, i love that. i enjoy seeing how writers (or editors) come up with good titles, and the fun and interesting ways they relate to the text of the piece. i enjoy when the title is clearly an allusion or reference to something, and chasing it down leads me to learn something new. and i even enjoy when the title is just a pun or play on words, because writers live for moments like that :) in this case i definitely felt "wow, that's an interesting quote, and i can see what they are getting at. let's read the article to see how it's substantiated or used as a springboard". clickbait is more "we have some amazing!!!!! information to tell you but to find out what you will have to read the article", e.g. the classic listicle format "10 things we imagined a beowulf cluster of - number 4 will shock you!", the spammy "one weird trick doctors don't want you to know" or the tabloid "john brown's shocking affair!". and yes, that sort of thing is a plague on the internet and i would not like to see more of it, but also that is not what is going on here.
- dahart 3y agoI agree with everything you said in general, and I also enjoy good titles. Do you feel like the article substantiated the quote? I don’t think it even came close. Where does it link a “lust” for certainty with lying? This is admittedly a subtle point, but I’d be perfectly fine with starting the article with the same quote, attributed to someone, as a decorative introduction. That’s a pretty common writing device. (And importantly in that case, the quote doesn’t need to be substantiated.) It’s just using it for the title in this case that rubs me the wrong way. Using the word “lies” is almost never good, especially when you are explicitly criticizing someone or something. IMO using “lies” is more or less equivalent to your example “number 4 will shock you”, use of that word is designed to invoke the same response. They stopped a hair short of literally stating Google is lying, but the implication combined with the first line of the article is very strong. One real problem with such an implication is that it may itself be wrong. It’s presuming active dishonesty when the problem could easily be a mistake. When putting these things together with the article’s misuse of the Y axis to again make emotional but not necessarily accurate points, I still think “clickbait” is warranted here - this writing is being a tiny bit manipulative.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]