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As I've commented before: it provides a perverse incentive to editorialize a title until it gets upvoted to the front page and gets enough attention from a mod

As I've commented before: it provides a perverse incentive to editorialize a title until it gets upvoted to the front page and gets enough attention from a mod to be corrected. It makes the game of titling a submission even more complex. When I see something with Title A in the morning and re-click the link with Title B later in the day, and to my surprise they are not only the same article but the very same HN submission, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This happens a lot, perhaps because I'm on the East Coast and the mods are on the West? I've started spending less and less time on HN partly due to this, and all the meta-discussion that it generates. Reddit has successfully managed to take these types of discussions off into subreddits where they can be safely ignored, it is the first discussion board of any significant note to not shove meta issues in front of everyone. I'm actually starting to wish that HN would become more like Reddit, in some ways.

bhauer 13y ago
My chief misgiving with the title policy is partly of my own making. Not being a graphic designer, I created a style for my personal blog that uses a large font for titles. I think the design looks best when the title is short and only a single line. So I recently titled a blog entry "Unfair comparisons" and when I submitted it to HN, I added parenthetical clarification to the title that this was about comparing across disparate attributes when benchmarking web development frameworks. That clarification was later edited out of the HN submission, leaving just "Unfair comparisons." Fine. It's just my blog, so be it. Like I said, it's my own fault for making a design that limits my title length, and I should correct that if I had a serious problem with the policy. But since I was asked at submission time to provide a title, I preferred giving the potential reader here at HN some added clarity about the subject matter before they clicked. I know as an HN reader, I don't like vague, short submission titles. I probably would have never clicked "Unfair comparisons" myself because I'd quickly think, "about what?" and move on.

bhauer 13y ago

My chief misgiving with the title policy is partly of my own making. Not being a graphic designer, I created a style for my personal blog that uses a large font for titles. I think the design looks best when the title is short and only a single line. So I recently titled a blog entry "Unfair comparisons" and when I submitted it to HN, I added parenthetical clarification to the title that this was about comparing across disparate attributes when benchmarking web development frameworks. That clarification was later edited out of the HN submission, leaving just "Unfair comparisons." Fine. It's just my blog, so be it. Like I said, it's my own fault for making a design that limits my title length, and I should correct that if I had a serious problem with the policy. But since I was asked at submission time to provide a title, I preferred giving the potential reader here at HN some added clarity about the subject matter before they clicked. I know as an HN reader, I don't like vague, short submission titles. I probably would have never clicked "Unfair comparisons" myself because I'd quickly think, "about what?" and move on.