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Could we do better? With "respecting" stupid article titles? @dang Perhaps even prompting for two titles at submission. One "unedited" and one "descriptive"? A

by creer 3y ago

Could we do better? With "respecting" stupid article titles? @dang Perhaps even prompting for two titles at submission. One "unedited" and one "descriptive"? And allowing our HN settings to choose "descriptive"?

em-bee 3y ago
or just show both. other link collection sites feature a title and a short description, summary or excerpt from the article. this is one thing i am missing from HN. (although i don't miss it much because the feed that i use to follow HN does feature the first few lines from the article which solves the problem for me)
jjulius 3y ago
Genuinely curious, not asking combatively... ... what's the big deal? I don't get the fuss over something like this. Feels innocuous.
- fragmede 3y ago
  When you make a submission, you want people to click on your link and if there’s a stupid headline, then they’re not gonna click on your link. Other times it could come across as misleading if the article’s headline, uses I, but I’m not the one that wrote it, using that headline makes it seem like I was the one that wrote it and I don’t want to make it seem like I’m pretending to be someone else and take credit for their work. Might not be a big deal to you, but I hate it when other people take credit for my work.
- creer 3y ago
  There is a range of useless, misleading, and time wasting. In this case, the title is fun and deliberately misleading (in a fun way, sure) and a waste of time. And is really but really not likely to lead the right audience to the right article. Often other times the title is not misleading but totally useless. A recent example: "Grok" (and URL) - which is sufficient if you already know what this is about but totally unhelpful otherwise. Another recent example "A Parabel" - who's going to click through? Will they have clicked through in any deliberate manner or just grazing? If anyone wanted to encourage deliberate use of our time, this is not the way to do it. None of this is the end of the world. But it IS wasting our time. This all at the same time as HN gets too many submissions for the members to usefully screen. Seems to me many useful submissions fall through with hardly any notice. Allowing more useful titles (without even demanding them) would go in the right direction: more of the useful submissions making it through and more of our time spent on the right things.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pvg 3y ago
This one seems neither clickbait nor misleading so the original is fine? As to 'descriptive', there's verbiage on that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22work%20a%20little%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- creer 3y ago
  It's clickbait in a way that doesn't even make sense, really :-) - From a point of view of attracting... which clicks?

by creer 3y ago

em-bee 3y ago

or just show both. other link collection sites feature a title and a short description, summary or excerpt from the article. this is one thing i am missing from HN. (although i don't miss it much because the feed that i use to follow HN does feature the first few lines from the article which solves the problem for me)

jjulius 3y ago

Genuinely curious, not asking combatively... ... what's the big deal? I don't get the fuss over something like this. Feels innocuous.

fragmede 3y ago
When you make a submission, you want people to click on your link and if there’s a stupid headline, then they’re not gonna click on your link. Other times it could come across as misleading if the article’s headline, uses I, but I’m not the one that wrote it, using that headline makes it seem like I was the one that wrote it and I don’t want to make it seem like I’m pretending to be someone else and take credit for their work. Might not be a big deal to you, but I hate it when other people take credit for my work.
creer 3y ago
There is a range of useless, misleading, and time wasting. In this case, the title is fun and deliberately misleading (in a fun way, sure) and a waste of time. And is really but really not likely to lead the right audience to the right article. Often other times the title is not misleading but totally useless. A recent example: "Grok" (and URL) - which is sufficient if you already know what this is about but totally unhelpful otherwise. Another recent example "A Parabel" - who's going to click through? Will they have clicked through in any deliberate manner or just grazing? If anyone wanted to encourage deliberate use of our time, this is not the way to do it. None of this is the end of the world. But it IS wasting our time. This all at the same time as HN gets too many submissions for the members to usefully screen. Seems to me many useful submissions fall through with hardly any notice. Allowing more useful titles (without even demanding them) would go in the right direction: more of the useful submissions making it through and more of our time spent on the right things.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pvg 3y ago

This one seems neither clickbait nor misleading so the original is fine? As to 'descriptive', there's verbiage on that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22work%20a%20little%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

creer 3y ago
It's clickbait in a way that doesn't even make sense, really :-) - From a point of view of attracting... which clicks?