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I think people know that, but I think they also know that HN policy for the past few years has been to revert user-supplied titles back to the original article

by chc 12y ago

I think people know that, but I think they also know that HN policy for the past few years has been to revert user-supplied titles back to the original article title, so it's hard to know what the right thing is to do.

dang 12y ago
No, that's a common misconception. The policy (and practice) have always been as the guidelines say; that's why we changed this story's title from the baity original to "Moss Graffiti". Perhaps I'll add this info to my remark above. I think the reason for the misconception is mostly sample bias. People don't see most of the cases that get silently fixed and/or don't realize that we fixed them. Only the ones that seem wrong stand out.
- chc 12y ago
  I think the reason for the misconception is that Paul Graham actually said that it was the default policy. "The only way we can tell if a newly created title is accurate is to read the article, and we're not about to read every article submitted to HN. The only option is to revert to the original title, which is at least what the author intended." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466) After that, it seemed like people kind of gave up the fight and just started leaving the original title more often. (I don't mean to argue with you here. I gladly accept that it is not the way that post seemed to indicate. I'm just trying to identify the source of the disconnect.)
  - dang 12y ago
    He was talking about the general case, and that's still true. But there are exceptions. It's usually easy to tell that a title is linkbait; indeed, that basically follows from the definition. And users, who can and do read the articles, protest if the title is false. The only thing we changed about titles since PG handed off moderation duty is to emphasize that it's ok to take other language from the article, such as a subtitle, a photo caption, or a representative sentence, if the formal title doesn't represent the article accurately. It's nearly always possible to do this, so it strikes the right balance between wanting informative titles and not letting submitters editorialize. But even that is barely a change. PG mentioned subtitles in the post you quoted.

by chc 12y ago

dang 12y ago

No, that's a common misconception. The policy (and practice) have always been as the guidelines say; that's why we changed this story's title from the baity original to "Moss Graffiti". Perhaps I'll add this info to my remark above. I think the reason for the misconception is mostly sample bias. People don't see most of the cases that get silently fixed and/or don't realize that we fixed them. Only the ones that seem wrong stand out.

chc 12y ago
I think the reason for the misconception is that Paul Graham actually said that it was the default policy. "The only way we can tell if a newly created title is accurate is to read the article, and we're not about to read every article submitted to HN. The only option is to revert to the original title, which is at least what the author intended." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466) After that, it seemed like people kind of gave up the fight and just started leaving the original title more often. (I don't mean to argue with you here. I gladly accept that it is not the way that post seemed to indicate. I'm just trying to identify the source of the disconnect.)
- dang 12y ago
  He was talking about the general case, and that's still true. But there are exceptions. It's usually easy to tell that a title is linkbait; indeed, that basically follows from the definition. And users, who can and do read the articles, protest if the title is false. The only thing we changed about titles since PG handed off moderation duty is to emphasize that it's ok to take other language from the article, such as a subtitle, a photo caption, or a representative sentence, if the formal title doesn't represent the article accurately. It's nearly always possible to do this, so it strikes the right balance between wanting informative titles and not letting submitters editorialize. But even that is barely a change. PG mentioned subtitles in the post you quoted.