4 ms·

A dangerous trend. If 100% of provocative linkbait titles lead to crappy articles, then I can safely ignore them, but if , say, 85% of them lead to crappy artic

A dangerous trend. If 100% of provocative linkbait titles lead to crappy articles, then I can safely ignore them, but if , say, 85% of them lead to crappy articles and 15% to good ones, then I have to waste resources derefencing pointers. Or maybe I could just boycott linkbait titles altogether. If everyone does that the new way to get people to read your article would be... drumroll... to write an accurate title! Now that would be scary wouldn't it? The end of an era.

kirubakaran 18y ago
Just read the comments before you read the article to crowdsource your dereference. Choosing to boycott linkbait will hardly make a difference as the linkbait aims to suck in the suckers and there are plenty of them.
- m_eiman 18y ago
  That doesn't save you the dereferencing, though. It'll actually add another dereferencing for 15% of the articles, although by scanning the comments instead of the article you don't give the writer the satisfaction of a higher page view count (and possibly related ad income). Which in turn, in an ideal world, would make linkbait titles less popular (in favor of some other scheme, of course). So, sounds like a good idea to me!
Hexstream 18y ago
I elaborated on this on a new thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503561
mdemare 18y ago
If it was a crappy article, it wouldn't have made it to #3 on HN. I wouldn't have clicked on a link with this title in any other context.
fh 18y ago
> If 100% of provocative linkbait titles lead to crappy articles, then I can safely ignore them, but if , say, 85% of them lead to crappy articles and 15% to good ones, then I have to waste resources derefencing pointers. That's an interesting and practical idea. To take your suggestion one step further, I propose that submissions of good articles should from now on include [Good article] in the title; crappy articles should include [Crappy article]. That way, I can only click on the links tagged [Good article] and ignore the crappy ones. (If the idea turns out to be popular, this can be automated with two checkboxes in the submission form.) What do you think?

kirubakaran 18y ago

Just read the comments before you read the article to crowdsource your dereference. Choosing to boycott linkbait will hardly make a difference as the linkbait aims to suck in the suckers and there are plenty of them.

m_eiman 18y ago
That doesn't save you the dereferencing, though. It'll actually add another dereferencing for 15% of the articles, although by scanning the comments instead of the article you don't give the writer the satisfaction of a higher page view count (and possibly related ad income). Which in turn, in an ideal world, would make linkbait titles less popular (in favor of some other scheme, of course). So, sounds like a good idea to me!

Hexstream 18y ago

I elaborated on this on a new thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503561

mdemare 18y ago

If it was a crappy article, it wouldn't have made it to #3 on HN. I wouldn't have clicked on a link with this title in any other context.

fh 18y ago

> If 100% of provocative linkbait titles lead to crappy articles, then I can safely ignore them, but if , say, 85% of them lead to crappy articles and 15% to good ones, then I have to waste resources derefencing pointers. That's an interesting and practical idea. To take your suggestion one step further, I propose that submissions of good articles should from now on include [Good article] in the title; crappy articles should include [Crappy article]. That way, I can only click on the links tagged [Good article] and ignore the crappy ones. (If the idea turns out to be popular, this can be automated with two checkboxes in the submission form.) What do you think?