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>This would be clearer if we didn't let submitters enter a title-- if our software simply let people submit urls, and retrieved the title from the page. We don'
by anon1385 13y ago
>This would be clearer if we didn't let submitters enter a title-- if our software simply let people submit urls, and retrieved the title from the page. We don't do this because it's too inflexible. Some articles have titles that are too long. In others the subtitle makes a better title.
The problem is you've created a horrible half way house. There is a class of submissions that only make sense or attract interest with a custom title. These generally get reverted to some meaningless title which then prompts a lot of pointless discussion about the title change. If you don't have the man power to review custom titles, and don't trust the community to do it then disallow them other than in the case of manually editing down titles that are too long. It means missing out on a certain class of submissions, but those are mostly a mess these days anyway because they get filled with people talking about the automatic title change and people confused about why the link was submitted and upvoted.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago> a horrible half way house Horrible might be a little strong. "Mildly confusing," or, "suboptimal in certain respects" are more accurate.
- slowdown 13y agoI expect you to be shadow banned without reason in 3..2..1... :D
- tptacek 13y agoHahahaha the part time site admins running this place for free will totally just shadow ban you for saying something they disagree about, funny joke.
- slowdown 13y agoYeah right, there are no incidents of people getting shadow banned due to personal vengeance/ stuff they disagree about, on Hackernews. /s And 'running it free' is not like they are doing us a favour like you make it out to be, but running it right, is. And we all know you are one of the good admins here too :) /s
- smackfu 13y agoIt's not like anyone would know if they did.
- i_am_dead 13y agoHappened to me, more than once.
- tptacek 13y agoThe problem is that they have a simple policy that makes total sense based on their principles (first person to post a story doesn't have special privileges, and posts are community property) and their limitations (part time admins). Unfortunately, that policy engages with an issue that nerds can debate endlessly --- which title is better? What constitutes editorializing? Are original author titles the optimal titles? Oh, look, there's that word "optimal" --- let's spend seventeen weeks debating it! Therefore, it seems like there's something for us to discuss. But there really isn't a discussion to be had here. People who want titles to be managed should start their own HN alternatives. We could use more of them. Or, even simpler: if you have a story with a bad title and a new title you feel strongly about, instead of submitting and then writing a long comment, write a blog post about the story and submit that instead. Of course, those two suggestions are much less fun to talk about than a debate about titling stories.
- bryanlarsen 13y ago"write a blog post about the story and submit that instead." A long comment and a link are probably OK, but if you just want to change the title, you'd probably get accused of blogspam.
- DigitalJack 13y agoI don't know if tpacek meant this instead, but how about writing an article briefly explaining why your title is better and then provide a follow on link to the article. This has the advantage of getting the right title, getting out a link to the article, and having a quick synopsis of why the title change was made in the first place.
- dhimes 13y agowrite a blog post about the story and submit that instead Well, actually, the guidelines ask us to submit the original. But you can submit the original and link to your blog in the comments.
- speeder 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- misuba 13y agoMake a blog post with your custom title, link to the article you were going to submit, add your commentary even more fully, submit your blog post.
- kingsidharth 13y agoPeople hate that and often call it a link-bait or the top comment ends being "Link to the Original". But then the top comment on such submissions end up being [Original]: <link> So it just might work.
- coffeemug 13y agoI find people who vehemently debate relatively esoteric HN policies like title changes a little odd. In order to function, every ship needs a captain. PG is the captain of this particular ship. If you don't like a policy, you can suggest an improvement and see if he decides if it's worthwhile to make a change. The HN people are always very responsive and thoughtful, so you can't fault them for ignoring their users or making ad-hoc decisions. If you happen not to like the decisions of the captain of this particular ship, you're always welcome to get off at the next port. It's pretty simple, so I really don't understand where the complaints are coming from.
- smacktoward 13y agoIt's not that hard to understand, really. People get passionate about the things they like. They want to see those things be as successful as they possibly can. When they see a decision made that they think will hinder that, they get cranky. But they're only cranky because they care; nobody complains about the policies at a place they never go to, or gripes when a band they don't listen to changes its sound. In that sense it's a compliment to PG and the admins that people get so worked up about things like this; it shows they've built something people care about.
- mixmax 13y agoThe easy way to solve this problem would be to add a sub-title field on the submission page. For many submission it could be left blank, but for the ones where the submitter wants to draw attention to something special or non-obvious, like a bug in the submitted page, he could fill out the sub-title.
- macspoofing 13y agoIt just isn't that big of a deal. Either way.
- studentrob 13y agoAgree, this comes down to trust. Trust trust trust. If you don't have infinite time for moderating, paul, open it up to others. In fact I'd love to see a system where people can also vote on titles. Most people (aside from the OP and submitters) hate sensationalized titles and would vote up a better one. I guess Reddit kind of does this by allowing multiple submissions of the same link, but you still get a lot of garbage titles voted up anyway, and by the time the submission makes it to the front page, the title is fixed.