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HN has some heuristics to reduce hyperbole in submissions which occasionally backfire amusingly.
by thombles 9mo ago
HN has some heuristics to reduce hyperbole in submissions which occasionally backfire amusingly.
- pjmlp 9mo agoYou have a few minutes to change the title after the submission, I do it all the time.
- tux3 9mo agoIt's rare to see the mangling heuristics improve a title these days. There was a specific type of clickbait title that was overused at the time, so a rule was created. And now that the original problem has passed, we're stuck with it.
- mort96 9mo agoYeah it's a huge mistake IMO. I see it fucking up titles so frequently, and it flies in the face of the "do not editorialise titles" rule: [...] please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. It is much worse, I think, to regularly drastically change the meaning of a title automatically until a moderator happens to notice to change it back, than to allow the occasional somewhat exaggerated original post title. As it stands, the HN title suggests that Raymond thinks the C++ 'try' keyword is a poor imitation of some other language's 'try'. In reality, the post is about a way to mimic Java's 'finally' in C++, which the original title clearly (if humorously) encapsulates. Raymond's words have been misrepresented here for over 4 hours at this point. I do not understand how this is an acceptable trade-off.
- mcny 9mo agoPersonally, I would rather we have a lower bar for killing submissions quickly with maybe five or ten flags and less automated editorializing of titles.
- rramadass 9mo agoYou can always contact hn@ycombinator.com to point out errors of this nature and have it corrected by one of the mods.
- UncleMeat 9mo agoA better approach would be to not so aggressively modify headlines. Relying on somebody to detect the error, email the mods (significant friction), and then hope the mods act (after discussion has already been skewed) is not really a great solution.
- mort96 9mo agoIt has been up with the incorrect title for over 7 hours now. That's most of the Hacker News front-page lifecycle. The system for correcting bad automatic editorialisation clearly isn't working well enough.
- rramadass 9mo agoOh, come on man! These are trivial bugs. Whoever noticed it first should have sent the email to the mods. I did it before i posted my previous comment and i now see that the title has been changed appropriately.
- mort96 9mo ago7. hours.
- rramadass 9mo agoPresumably nobody informed the mods (before i did) and it was very early in the morning in the US (assuming mods are based in the US). That would explain the delay. Anyway, going forward, if anything like this happens again folks should simply shoot an email immediately to the mods and if the topic is really interesting deserving of more discussion they can always request the mods to keep the post on the frontpage for a longer time period via second-chance pool etc. It just takes a minute or two of one's time and hence not worth getting het up over.
- mort96 9mo agoIt would be easier for everyone involved, and not depend on mods being awake, if HN didn't just automatically drastically change the meaning of headlines. Again, this post was misrepresenting Raymond's words for over 7 hours. That's most of its time on the front page. The current system doesn't work.
- johnfn 9mo agoWhile I disagree with you that it's "a huge mistake" (I think it works fine in 95% of cases), it strikes me that this sort of semantic textual substitution is a perfect task for an LLM. Why not just ask a cheap LLM to de-sensationalize any post which hits more than 50 points or so?
- actionfromafar 9mo agoWe saw that a few days ago, someone did that.
- miki123211 9mo agoSubmissions with titles that undergo this treatment should get a separate screen where both titles are proposed, and the ultimate choice belongs to the submitter.
- mort96 9mo agoThat would be an excellent solution I think.
- ibobev 9mo agoI intentionally shortened the title because there is a length limit. Perhaps I didn't do it the right way because I was unfamiliar with the mentioned meme. Sorry about that.