4 ms·
What is going on with the editing of submission titles?
Twice now, I've seen my submission titles edited by someone else (probably Graham or his admins, if he has any for this site).
Both times, the edits were innocuous (the first one improved the title ever so slightly) but unnecessary.
It's not a huge problem, but it is a bit annoying.
- epi0Bauqu 19y agoWhat were the changes?
- eposts 19y agoI've had this happen to one of my submissions too. It was this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988 I didn't put the authors name in title and it was edited to reflect that.
- mk 19y agoI believe in my submission I had put the authors name at the end, and it has now been moved to the front of the title. Either that or I'm just really tired.
- dpapathanasiou 19y agoThey were minor edits for brevity, just the removal of one or two adjectives and conjunctions. I.e., they were the types of things that if I were writing a paper and a draft reviewer suggested removing them, I would have said "ok". But that's not the point.
- epi0Bauqu 19y agoAgreed. I was just wondering out of interest.
- staunch 19y agoI think it'd be nice if there were some simple page displaying what instructions the admins are operating under. They're white knights not gestapo, right? :-)
- palish 19y agoWhy's it matter? They have our interests in mind. This works because we're small and Paul's visible. I'm sure there are no specific 'instructions'. They're trying to keep the site nice because it's a reflection of YCombinator.
- staunch 19y agoDoesn't need to be very formal. Just a little friendly transparency to avoid theses kinds of threads being repeated frequently.
- pg 19y agoEditors edit submission titles for two reasons: 1. To keep the site clean (no spelling mistakes, gratuitously long titles, SHOUTING!!!, etc.) 2. To keep titles fairly neutral. People have a right to say what they want in comments, but because a story can only be submitted once, if we didn't edit submission titles, the first submitter could put whatever spin on the story, and all readers would have to read it as that.
- eposts 19y agoSounds good. What about posting a link to the original content. Here is an example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528 From the article it is clear that the original news was broken at: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9761584-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9761584-7.html?part=rss&... I am not sure why the submitter decided to post a site that quoted the news instead of the original news source.
- danw 19y agoLinks like that are regularly edited to point to the original article instead
- budu3 19y agoI think we're quickly approaching a slippery slope here. Seeing as a username is attached to every post, isn't the user somewhat responsible for every link (s)he posts? It now constitutes part of their reputation. Now, if an editor modifies the post but the username is still attached to the post and their is no indication that it's been edited , is the original poster still responsible for the post? (S)he can turn around and say, "That's not what I posted. I don't want that attached to my submission history. I don't want any karma that's associated with that altered post, whether good or bad."
- palish 19y agoI sure wouldn't want to be associated with my submission anymore if the editors changed my title from "UPDATED!!!!1" to "Updated".
- mangodrunk 19y agoWe're wasting a lot of time, time is money! We are trying to start our own companies, and come here for meeting people and learning. This doesn't fall in either category. We don't have a lot of time in starting our companies, but I guess this is good because while you guys are being distracted by all this, I'll have read the important links and maybe make some breakthrough in my "killer app".
- michaelneale 19y agoI think its fine - anyone who things otherwise will find plenty of non editor places to hang out on the net.