4 ms·

Ugh, op here. Why was title changed? It's less informative now :(

by Ygg2 13y ago

pearjuice 13y ago
SEO, click-through rate et cetera
- sillysaurus 13y ago
  Hacker News isn't even listed on search engines because it disallows Googlebot.
  - pearjuice 13y ago
    It is definitely listed.
    - sillysaurus 13y ago
      Hm, that's a recent change, then. HN wasn't listed just a week or two ago.
      - simonbrown 13y ago
        I've been using Google to find things on HN for a few years. The file from January 2013 appears just as permissive: http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093744/http://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093744/http://news.ycombi...
        sillysaurus 13y ago
        I have been too. I was surprised to find that HN didn't show up on Google a couple weeks ago. Yes, it looks like I was wrong. No, pg isn't changing titles because of SEO.
  - 542458 13y ago
    Maybe I'm missing something but https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt shows no such thing...
  - sp332 13y ago
    I dont' think that's true. https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt User-Agent: * Disallow: /x? Disallow: /vote? Disallow: /reply? Disallow: /submitted? Disallow: /submitlink? Disallow: /threads? Crawl-delay: 30 Links in comments are marked nofollow but submissions are not.
jannotti 13y ago
Agreed. There's seems to be a semi-automatic title change process that can make wildly poor decisions. "Bugger" is an absolutely useless title.
swalsh 13y ago
Yeah, there's a line here. Changing a title for the purpose of being MORE sensational and attention grabbing is a good reason to change. But if you're changing it to be informative, then to me its a reasonable change.
simantel 13y ago
HN Guidelines[1] state that original article titles should be used as the title on HN (though I agree that it's sometimes to the detriment of HN readers). [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gojomo 13y ago
  Indeed, title changes (by either submitter or an admin) which improve the original title, without adding spin or sizzle, should be welcomed. The mechanistic insistence on original titles often gets things wrong, leaving a title in place that "buries the lede" (the actually new nugget in a particular story) or includes its own misleading spin. People then either miss or waste time on stories, when a few reasonable extra words in the title would have helped. Possible experiments to address this might include: • Adding a separately-voted 'title tournament' for each story, in which the original title, submission title, and others audience-submitted compete. (They're not competing for which gets the story the most upvotes, but which best describes the item.) • Allowing a subhead per story, where either the original subhead or some other pull-up excerpt can appear for context. (This could be from the OP, admins, a group tournament, or even just wiki-style.)

Ugh, op here. Why was title changed? It's less informative now :(

by Ygg2 13y ago

Ugh, op here. Why was title changed? It's less informative now :(

pearjuice 13y ago

SEO, click-through rate et cetera

sillysaurus 13y ago
Hacker News isn't even listed on search engines because it disallows Googlebot.
- pearjuice 13y ago
  It is definitely listed.
  - sillysaurus 13y ago
    Hm, that's a recent change, then. HN wasn't listed just a week or two ago.
    - simonbrown 13y ago
      I've been using Google to find things on HN for a few years. The file from January 2013 appears just as permissive: http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093744/http://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093744/http://news.ycombi...
      - sillysaurus 13y ago
        I have been too. I was surprised to find that HN didn't show up on Google a couple weeks ago. Yes, it looks like I was wrong. No, pg isn't changing titles because of SEO.
- 542458 13y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something but https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt shows no such thing...
- sp332 13y ago
  I dont' think that's true. https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt User-Agent: * Disallow: /x? Disallow: /vote? Disallow: /reply? Disallow: /submitted? Disallow: /submitlink? Disallow: /threads? Crawl-delay: 30 Links in comments are marked nofollow but submissions are not.

jannotti 13y ago

Agreed. There's seems to be a semi-automatic title change process that can make wildly poor decisions. "Bugger" is an absolutely useless title.

swalsh 13y ago

Yeah, there's a line here. Changing a title for the purpose of being MORE sensational and attention grabbing is a good reason to change. But if you're changing it to be informative, then to me its a reasonable change.

simantel 13y ago

HN Guidelines[1] state that original article titles should be used as the title on HN (though I agree that it's sometimes to the detriment of HN readers). [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

gojomo 13y ago
Indeed, title changes (by either submitter or an admin) which improve the original title, without adding spin or sizzle, should be welcomed. The mechanistic insistence on original titles often gets things wrong, leaving a title in place that "buries the lede" (the actually new nugget in a particular story) or includes its own misleading spin. People then either miss or waste time on stories, when a few reasonable extra words in the title would have helped. Possible experiments to address this might include: • Adding a separately-voted 'title tournament' for each story, in which the original title, submission title, and others audience-submitted compete. (They're not competing for which gets the story the most upvotes, but which best describes the item.) • Allowing a subhead per story, where either the original subhead or some other pull-up excerpt can appear for context. (This could be from the OP, admins, a group tournament, or even just wiki-style.)