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If an author is unable to communicate his message in the headline The author is writing a title appropriate for the location the article is posted at. That con
by SoftwareMaven 14y ago
If an author is unable to communicate his message in the headline
The author is writing a title appropriate for the location the article is posted at. That context may be critical and is missing once the article winds up on HN.
The fixing effect is in my opinion positive.
I would say it is net positive, but that doesn't mean there aren't cases that are significantly negative.
The top news stories don't look like a shouting match where the scariest story wins.
This is a false dichotomy. We can have sane editing of titles that give us context without leaving shouting matches.
- middus 14y agoTo give an example. Let's say I link to the editorial of the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL. In the context of DER SPIEGEL, the title "Editorial" makes sense. On HN "Editorial" is pretty much a useless title.
- stfu 14y agoThe problem with "sane" editing is, that it is much more difficult to enforce than just a simple - always the original headline - rule. The story here is an exception as it is a personal interest theme. But as soon as we are in more subjective terms (e.g. "writing up" the successes of a project) I can imagine many comments discussing if the spin on a headline is still okay or across the line. Plus if somebody is convinced that the original story absolutely needs the editorializing it might be better to express this not just in a headline but to write a blogpost etc on it.