3 ms·

"H0w [...]" titles would be somewhat amusing and appropriate as a hacky way to bash those in, albeit inappropriate as being rather silly and circumventing this

"H0w [...]" titles would be somewhat amusing and appropriate as a hacky way to bash those in, albeit inappropriate as being rather silly and circumventing this sort of policy. The HN website editorializing titles automatically indeed seems wrong though: if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much, maybe flagged, and otherwise dealt with using generic mechanisms, but attempting to automatically improve them does not seem to do much good. On a more optimistic note, at least those are predictable substitutions for now, and not any of the ML business.

notahacker 3y ago
Yeah. Similarly, the HN convention of removing the number from a listicle doesn't stop them from being listicles, it just means users are more likely to click on them in the mistaken belief that they're a reasoned piece written by a subject matter expert. And the idea that the worst thing an author can do to grab your attention is stick a number in the title seems quaint in the context of the modern internet. Meanwhile, most of the actual ragebait makes it through unscathed...
distcs 3y ago
> if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much I am an active /new page lurker. You'd be surprised by the number of times I've seen clickbaity titles getting upvoted and making it to the front page. Sure the clickbaity titles had good content too, otherwise they wouldn't get upvoted again and again. But when there are two posts with equally good content, the one with clickbaity title gets the needed votes soon enough to get into the front page and the other one keeps languishing at /new. It's sad but that's what I see happening again and again at /new. I try to offset the unfairness by voting for the non-clickbaity interesting posts but adding one vote to a post that nobody else is voting for does not make any meaningful difference.

notahacker 3y ago

Yeah. Similarly, the HN convention of removing the number from a listicle doesn't stop them from being listicles, it just means users are more likely to click on them in the mistaken belief that they're a reasoned piece written by a subject matter expert. And the idea that the worst thing an author can do to grab your attention is stick a number in the title seems quaint in the context of the modern internet. Meanwhile, most of the actual ragebait makes it through unscathed...

distcs 3y ago

> if those are bad or clickbaity titles, they probably could just not be upvoted much I am an active /new page lurker. You'd be surprised by the number of times I've seen clickbaity titles getting upvoted and making it to the front page. Sure the clickbaity titles had good content too, otherwise they wouldn't get upvoted again and again. But when there are two posts with equally good content, the one with clickbaity title gets the needed votes soon enough to get into the front page and the other one keeps languishing at /new. It's sad but that's what I see happening again and again at /new. I try to offset the unfairness by voting for the non-clickbaity interesting posts but adding one vote to a post that nobody else is voting for does not make any meaningful difference.