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To me, a submitter is an editor To be fair to PG, this is not his view. His view is also not unreasonable. By delegating editing to the publishers, he provides
by 001sky 13y ago
To me, a submitter is an editor
To be fair to PG, this is not his view. His view is also not unreasonable. By delegating editing to the publishers, he provides a defence against PRs astroturfing HN. So, he is able to kill two birds: lower overhead and higher signal to noise.
The obvious problem is the edge case, where the original title is hopelessly too general (although perhaps was accurate in the context it was originally published). Along with the other edge cases (obviously false/misleading or flamebait). The latter are subject to moderation (per his note above).
The "out of context/overly general" situation is the grey area, with no easy fix. It seems a smaller price to pay than the having PRs editorialize every post (option 1) or people blog-spamming externally modified links (option 2).
- lobster_johnson 13y ago> By delegating editing to the publishers, he provides a defence against PRs astroturfing HN Maybe I misunderstand the use case you are referring to, but isn't the PR always the publisher (or in cohorts with the publisher)? In other words, you can't use original titles to prevent astroturfing because the original title/content itself is tainted.
- 001sky 13y agoWhat you are trying to avoid is the "house of mirrors", with HN being the fun-house. PR work done through a publisher is not astroturfing, its "normal PR work". PRs disguising their paid work as "grass roots" support, though, is planting "fake grass". The latter is the definition of Astroturf. If you have PRs overwriting PRs, you just get a house of mirrors effect and start increasing noise/signal.
- lobster_johnson 13y agoBut surely the PR people would be in charge of the astroturfing, and hence in control of the titles used?
- 001sky 13y agoThat's exactly why (i'm assuming) PG doesn't want HN users re-writing the headlines. Its sort of like saying take 1 level of PR spin, and then discuss. The other option is take 2 levels of PR spin, and then discuss. The problem with the latter is that you end up with a matrix: AA AB BB BA, two of which are worse...