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But, HN titles are content. They are part of the conversation about the article. I agree that authors should be able to title and summarize their own work, bu

by adamtj 12y ago

But, HN titles are content. They are part of the conversation about the article. I agree that authors should be able to title and summarize their own work, but only in that work. They shouldn't be given any special control of the conversation about that work, which is what HN is. I don't see the purpose of having mods vet all titles or summaries. I don't think titles need any special blessing by an elite caste of users. I don't think it's important that titles be in any way "official" or even neutral. Perhaps I'm not concerned because I also don't see duplicate posts as being especially bad. Maybe they are a bit annoying sometimes, but there are worse problems in the world. Why not simply embrace duplicates and let the best title rise to the top? Certainly people occasionally post comments saying essentially the same thing. There, we just let the voting system do what it does and push the best version to the top. Why not do that with titles as well? The only problem I can see is that conversations may be fragmented -- but copy/paste is super easy. Links in comments are easy to create and to follow. The only real need I see for moderators is to occasionally deal with a flagrantly abusive link. Even that is questionable. I think people are smart. We're mostly adults here, and we aren't easily controlled with blatantly editorialized links. I don't see any danger that we need protection from.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
What's your response to this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466
- adamtj 12y ago
  Ah, thank you. That's what I assumed the policy was, but I wasn't sure if it was implicit or explicit. Now I know. I guess the point I'm attempting to argue is that this particular policy is suboptimal and should be changed. Of course, when a policy or consensus exists, we should follow it. When it's a bad policy, we should follow it until we change it or remove it. I think we should change this. My position basically boils down to a worse-is-better argument. I think the desire to maximize accuracy with original titles actually harms the conversation more than inaccuracies and editorializing in information-packed summaries. What matters to me in this case is the signal-to-noise ratio, not the absolute level of noise in the data. Original titles can be "cleaner" and less noisy, but they also have relatively little information, or signal. I would rather have twice the noise if it gives me three times the signal. I even see the noise as useful in a way. It adds color. Even when a title is inaccurate, it's sometimes interesting to think about how or why it is inaccurate. A little mess never killed anybody, and can even keep us healthy. Ultimately, if I'm so busy I don't have enough time to be occasionally mislead by a click-bait title, then I don't really have time to spend on HN in the first place. I think the right way to deal with inaccurate titles is either to simply ignore them, or maybe to downvote them and to upvote duplicate posts with better titles. But won't HN then turn into reddit? I don't think so. See, I think we try to fix too many things with laws where we should instead use social pressure. The reason that Americans don't litter very much isn't that it's now a ticketable offense. It's that we have decided that litterers are idiots and everybody hates them. The reason many subreddits are cesspools isn't the lack of rules, it's that they're populated by people who haven't collectively figured out a better way to behave -- or who don't particularly value the benefits of that different behavior. Adding a new rule won't fix anything if people don't understand and accept the purpose behind the rule. And if they understand the purpose, they usually don't need the rule. Someone could argue that HN is something of a cesspool because so many comment threads go off topic. Like this one. Some people despise that. In general, though, HN users generally seem to appreciate an off-topic conversation so long as it's adding value. What we don't approve of is comments that don't add value. But, we don't need rules for that. It's just our commonly accepted behavior. Other groups have different values, and that's ok.

by adamtj 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

What's your response to this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466

adamtj 12y ago
Ah, thank you. That's what I assumed the policy was, but I wasn't sure if it was implicit or explicit. Now I know. I guess the point I'm attempting to argue is that this particular policy is suboptimal and should be changed. Of course, when a policy or consensus exists, we should follow it. When it's a bad policy, we should follow it until we change it or remove it. I think we should change this. My position basically boils down to a worse-is-better argument. I think the desire to maximize accuracy with original titles actually harms the conversation more than inaccuracies and editorializing in information-packed summaries. What matters to me in this case is the signal-to-noise ratio, not the absolute level of noise in the data. Original titles can be "cleaner" and less noisy, but they also have relatively little information, or signal. I would rather have twice the noise if it gives me three times the signal. I even see the noise as useful in a way. It adds color. Even when a title is inaccurate, it's sometimes interesting to think about how or why it is inaccurate. A little mess never killed anybody, and can even keep us healthy. Ultimately, if I'm so busy I don't have enough time to be occasionally mislead by a click-bait title, then I don't really have time to spend on HN in the first place. I think the right way to deal with inaccurate titles is either to simply ignore them, or maybe to downvote them and to upvote duplicate posts with better titles. But won't HN then turn into reddit? I don't think so. See, I think we try to fix too many things with laws where we should instead use social pressure. The reason that Americans don't litter very much isn't that it's now a ticketable offense. It's that we have decided that litterers are idiots and everybody hates them. The reason many subreddits are cesspools isn't the lack of rules, it's that they're populated by people who haven't collectively figured out a better way to behave -- or who don't particularly value the benefits of that different behavior. Adding a new rule won't fix anything if people don't understand and accept the purpose behind the rule. And if they understand the purpose, they usually don't need the rule. Someone could argue that HN is something of a cesspool because so many comment threads go off topic. Like this one. Some people despise that. In general, though, HN users generally seem to appreciate an off-topic conversation so long as it's adding value. What we don't approve of is comments that don't add value. But, we don't need rules for that. It's just our commonly accepted behavior. Other groups have different values, and that's ok.