10 ms·

I’m uncomfortable with HN selectively deciding where to use the Article’s headline vs where to editorialize tbh. The implication here is that $moderator knows

I’m uncomfortable with HN selectively deciding where to use the Article’s headline vs where to editorialize tbh. The implication here is that $moderator knows better than the journalistic organization publishing this article. Might not be the intention, but it is a fair view on the editing.

happytoexplain 2y ago
>The implication here is that $moderator [or submitter] knows better than the journalistic organization I think that's exactly the intention, and personally I agree with it. I'm reading this via HN because I like HN's rules and community. I trust them to have better headline judgment than headline writers, on average. Not least because HN has apparently reasonable guidance against clickbait headlines, and many journalistic sources apparently do not, which is not terribly surprising considering the motivating factors involved.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  And even if you disagree with a HN title, you'll see the original once you click the link. It's not like it gets changed at the source. It would very quickly be brought up if a source title was significantly changed without reason.
dang 2y ago
We don't know better, we just have different jobs. Media organizations have headline writers whose job is to sex up the title. Our job is to knock it down to size. This is in the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." and there's a good 15 years of standard practice here around how to do that. We don't editorialize in the sense of using the title to take a side on the underlying topic; the goal is to be as accurate and neutral as possible, and to use representative language from the article itself ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=representative%20article%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). You have a good point (we're not experts or particularly qualified, so who do we think we are? it's a fair question!), but it's superseded by a more practical concern: if we didn't do this, HN's front page would be filled with linkbait titles. Since titles are the biggest influence on threads, this would change the character of the site and even make its mandate (intellectual curiosity) impossible. So we try to make it bookish (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bookish&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), to use pg's old word, and it has long been part of the implicit contract between the site and its readers—so much so that when a linkbait title does show up on the front page, they will complain in the thread about absentee mods and typically flag the submission.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  Thanks, this is a fair explanation.

happytoexplain 2y ago

>The implication here is that $moderator [or submitter] knows better than the journalistic organization I think that's exactly the intention, and personally I agree with it. I'm reading this via HN because I like HN's rules and community. I trust them to have better headline judgment than headline writers, on average. Not least because HN has apparently reasonable guidance against clickbait headlines, and many journalistic sources apparently do not, which is not terribly surprising considering the motivating factors involved.

xboxnolifes 2y ago
And even if you disagree with a HN title, you'll see the original once you click the link. It's not like it gets changed at the source. It would very quickly be brought up if a source title was significantly changed without reason.

dang 2y ago

We don't know better, we just have different jobs. Media organizations have headline writers whose job is to sex up the title. Our job is to knock it down to size. This is in the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." and there's a good 15 years of standard practice here around how to do that. We don't editorialize in the sense of using the title to take a side on the underlying topic; the goal is to be as accurate and neutral as possible, and to use representative language from the article itself ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=representative%20article%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). You have a good point (we're not experts or particularly qualified, so who do we think we are? it's a fair question!), but it's superseded by a more practical concern: if we didn't do this, HN's front page would be filled with linkbait titles. Since titles are the biggest influence on threads, this would change the character of the site and even make its mandate (intellectual curiosity) impossible. So we try to make it bookish (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bookish&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), to use pg's old word, and it has long been part of the implicit contract between the site and its readers—so much so that when a linkbait title does show up on the front page, they will complain in the thread about absentee mods and typically flag the submission.

aaomidi 2y ago
Thanks, this is a fair explanation.