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From the guidelines: > Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how
by diminoten 12y ago
From the guidelines:
> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.
and
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
- kareemm 12y ago> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important. The submitter didn't do this. > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. Guidelines != rules. Sometimes authors write poor headlines (this is a great example). The community benefits from headlines that are more descriptive of the article. Having mods change them back for consistency's sake harms HN more than it helps.
- diminoten 12y agoI'd rather be on a website that errs on the side of "no linkbait" than a website that allows too much linkbait.
- brianpgordon 12y agoI'd rather not be on a website that takes itself so seriously that people obsess over rules/guidelines. It seems like every popular post has this confusion and argument about changing titles.
- eric_h 12y agoThe original title is, indeed, misleading. The article is not about LIDAR specifically, but about how LIDAR is (mis)used in speed enforcement. IMO, the title change was warranted.
- diminoten 12y agoI think at this point your beef is with PG himself, or whoever he had write those guidelines. The thing the mods are trying to avoid is link baiting, and they tend to err on the side of "no exceptions". I prefer this, as any other option may lead to more unintentional bias, or worse.
- eric_h 12y agoI suppose that "Josh Bloch Fights a LIDAR Speeding Ticket (with Science)" is a bit more link bait-y than "The Lowdown on LIDAR". I would also argue that the former compactly explains the entire content of the article, much more so than the latter, especially given that the author claims no expertise on LIDAR. Regardless, I still would have preferred the original title. Perhaps removing the reference to Josh Bloch (and, perhaps, the parenthetical "with science") could have been dropped to reduce its link baity-ness. As an addendum, I clicked on the link and read the article after the title had been changed to match the article's title, so perhaps my stated preference, as an afterthought, is completely unfounded. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯