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I simply wouldn’t have looked at this with the new title. The original title was better. The new title deletes the interesting insight about the format they are

by wilg 3y ago

I simply wouldn’t have looked at this with the new title. The original title was better. The new title deletes the interesting insight about the format they are using. Now it just looks like a video about general HDR workflow and I don’t know why it’s been posted. The newsworthy element may not be the entire link but some element on the page, especially for longer form content.

altairprime 3y ago
Submitting a blog post about this would have been much more effective than linking an Apple developer video with a modified title. (And, then I wouldn’t have had to add quotes and context as a comment below.)
- wilg 3y ago
  Arguably, everything worked out fine until the title changed.
  - pvg 3y ago
    It didn't - one of the main reasons you can't make up your own title is that it acts as a kind of mega-comment over everyone else's comments. If you want to just comment, write a regular comment. If you want your own title with your own commentary, write your own commentary and submit it to HN with your title. What you can't do is use someone else's stuff to make your commentary more important.
    - wilg 3y ago
      Well, it wasn’t really commentary though. It was a pointer to the interesting information in the link.
      - pvg 3y ago
        That's commentary/editorializing. Nothing wrong with these things, you just don't get to do them in the title for the reasons mentioned in the previous comment.
        wilg 3y ago
        Fine, call it that if you want. You should be able to do it in the title. I don't agree with the rationale.
        pvg 3y ago
        It's pretty much how HN has always worked, mostly because the other way works worse.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Would it have been more effective? HN hates blogposts that reiterate a piece of news, and since the blog post would be only a paragraph long I would expect it to be replaced with the source video as soon as a mod sees it.
  - pvg 3y ago
    A huge chunk of HN stuff is blog posts. Plus if there's nothing to say about the thing than isn't more than a messageboard comment then there's not much reason it shouldn't just be a messageboard comment. It's definitely less 'effective' at dominating the discussion with a single comment but that's more or less the point.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      A huge chunk of HN stuff is substantial blog posts talking about their own things. Things get called blogspam all the time, and a three sentence post linking to a video will definitely get called blogspam. And the goal isn't to "dominate the discussion". Nobody else wants to submit this video. Nobody is being shouted over. The goal is to start a discussion about a specific thing, and making a comment on an otherwise boring link is not actually very good at starting a discussion.
      - pvg 3y ago
        The thing has to be interesting/substantial/big enough to carry a discussion. That's pretty much the functional difference between a comment and an HN story. 'Every comment should be allowed to also be a story' doesn't seem like a practical way to have a site that distinguishes between stories and comments.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Big enough to carry a discussion doesn't mean you have an entire blog post ready to write all by yourself. In general my complaint is that it's hard to link to a specific section or piece of information inside a larger article. So letting comments become stories willy-nilly is not my suggestion. This is about having an external story, but no good way to point at it. And a submission like this can't just be a comment because there's no story for it to be a comment on. The video would not otherwise have been submitted. And yes the option of "submission plus comment" exists but again that's a bad way to start a discussion when the submission has nothing obviously interesting about it. And it makes the experience even worse for someone that tries to read/watch the entire submission before looking at the comments, when most of the submission is pretty boring and the submitter only wanted to submit one portion.
xd1936 3y ago
Agreed. Original title was not clickbait or misleading in any way.
- pvg 3y ago
  "original title" means the original title of the article, not the title the submitter originally made up.
  - tormeh 3y ago
    That's the original title of the submission, though.
    - pvg 3y ago
      Yes but the guideline about 'original title' doesn't mean that. That's the editorialized title, not the original title of the thing. What you're suggesting is misconstruing the guideline to mean the opposite of what it actually means.
dang 3y ago
A good place to explain why an article is being posted is by adding a comment to the thread.
- wilg 3y ago
  No it isn’t, because you can’t see that from the main page so there’s no reason to look at the link or comments if you don’t know what is interesting about the post. This rule makes sense for editorialized titles, but not as much for trying to point to news that is buried in some larger page that does not have a useful title.

by wilg 3y ago

altairprime 3y ago

Submitting a blog post about this would have been much more effective than linking an Apple developer video with a modified title. (And, then I wouldn’t have had to add quotes and context as a comment below.)

wilg 3y ago
Arguably, everything worked out fine until the title changed.
- pvg 3y ago
  It didn't - one of the main reasons you can't make up your own title is that it acts as a kind of mega-comment over everyone else's comments. If you want to just comment, write a regular comment. If you want your own title with your own commentary, write your own commentary and submit it to HN with your title. What you can't do is use someone else's stuff to make your commentary more important.
  - wilg 3y ago
    Well, it wasn’t really commentary though. It was a pointer to the interesting information in the link.
    - pvg 3y ago
      That's commentary/editorializing. Nothing wrong with these things, you just don't get to do them in the title for the reasons mentioned in the previous comment.
      - wilg 3y ago
        Fine, call it that if you want. You should be able to do it in the title. I don't agree with the rationale.
        pvg 3y ago
        It's pretty much how HN has always worked, mostly because the other way works worse.
Dylan16807 3y ago
Would it have been more effective? HN hates blogposts that reiterate a piece of news, and since the blog post would be only a paragraph long I would expect it to be replaced with the source video as soon as a mod sees it.
- pvg 3y ago
  A huge chunk of HN stuff is blog posts. Plus if there's nothing to say about the thing than isn't more than a messageboard comment then there's not much reason it shouldn't just be a messageboard comment. It's definitely less 'effective' at dominating the discussion with a single comment but that's more or less the point.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    A huge chunk of HN stuff is substantial blog posts talking about their own things. Things get called blogspam all the time, and a three sentence post linking to a video will definitely get called blogspam. And the goal isn't to "dominate the discussion". Nobody else wants to submit this video. Nobody is being shouted over. The goal is to start a discussion about a specific thing, and making a comment on an otherwise boring link is not actually very good at starting a discussion.
    - pvg 3y ago
      The thing has to be interesting/substantial/big enough to carry a discussion. That's pretty much the functional difference between a comment and an HN story. 'Every comment should be allowed to also be a story' doesn't seem like a practical way to have a site that distinguishes between stories and comments.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Big enough to carry a discussion doesn't mean you have an entire blog post ready to write all by yourself. In general my complaint is that it's hard to link to a specific section or piece of information inside a larger article. So letting comments become stories willy-nilly is not my suggestion. This is about having an external story, but no good way to point at it. And a submission like this can't just be a comment because there's no story for it to be a comment on. The video would not otherwise have been submitted. And yes the option of "submission plus comment" exists but again that's a bad way to start a discussion when the submission has nothing obviously interesting about it. And it makes the experience even worse for someone that tries to read/watch the entire submission before looking at the comments, when most of the submission is pretty boring and the submitter only wanted to submit one portion.

xd1936 3y ago

Agreed. Original title was not clickbait or misleading in any way.

pvg 3y ago
"original title" means the original title of the article, not the title the submitter originally made up.
- tormeh 3y ago
  That's the original title of the submission, though.
  - pvg 3y ago
    Yes but the guideline about 'original title' doesn't mean that. That's the editorialized title, not the original title of the thing. What you're suggesting is misconstruing the guideline to mean the opposite of what it actually means.

dang 3y ago

A good place to explain why an article is being posted is by adding a comment to the thread.

wilg 3y ago
No it isn’t, because you can’t see that from the main page so there’s no reason to look at the link or comments if you don’t know what is interesting about the post. This rule makes sense for editorialized titles, but not as much for trying to point to news that is buried in some larger page that does not have a useful title.