3 ms·

Do you have any examples of specific articles with titles that would benefit from a longer limit?

by chris_j 12y ago

curtis 12y ago
Here's a couple of examples from my submission history. I've probably got better examples if I search farther back. a) Isaac Asimov wrote a “paper” about a time-hopping compound called thiotimoline b) In 1947 Isaac Asimov wrote a hilarious spoof of scientific papers about a time-hopping compound called thiotimoline The first version is the title I submitted under. The second title is the one I would have liked to use. The first is 78 characters and the second is 115. Here's another one (66 and 115 characters): a) Saroo’s Google-Earth Quest: How an Orphaned Boy Found His Way Home b) Years after getting lost at a train station, Saroo searched for his birth home using hazy memories and Google Earth Another thing of note is that you can often squeeze a title down to 80 characters or less, but it really takes a lot of time.
- chris_j 12y ago
  For me, I don't think that the longer titles are any better than the shorter ones, at least for the examples that you give above. Looking at the articles themselves, they have completely different titles to the ones that you picked (both the short and longer versions). This goes against the Hacker News Guidelines [0] which state: "...Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." Indeed, a general rule on Hacker News is not to editorialize headlines (ie make up headlines that look good in order to attract people to click on the link). This does of course raise the question of whether the Hacker News Guidelines are a good idea or not and I am torn on this one. On the one hand, I suppose there are occasions where a headline can be made clearer and more useful by rewriting it. On the other hand, I see the current guidelines as a backlash against the state of linkbait headlines on Reddit when Hacker News was first created all those years ago. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Do you have any examples of specific articles with titles that would benefit from a longer limit?

by chris_j 12y ago

Do you have any examples of specific articles with titles that would benefit from a longer limit?

Here's a couple of examples from my submission history. I've probably got better examples if I search farther back. a) Isaac Asimov wrote a “paper” about a time-hopping compound called thiotimoline b) In 1947 Isaac Asimov wrote a hilarious spoof of scientific papers about a time-hopping compound called thiotimoline The first version is the title I submitted under. The second title is the one I would have liked to use. The first is 78 characters and the second is 115. Here's another one (66 and 115 characters): a) Saroo’s Google-Earth Quest: How an Orphaned Boy Found His Way Home b) Years after getting lost at a train station, Saroo searched for his birth home using hazy memories and Google Earth Another thing of note is that you can often squeeze a title down to 80 characters or less, but it really takes a lot of time.

chris_j 12y ago
For me, I don't think that the longer titles are any better than the shorter ones, at least for the examples that you give above. Looking at the articles themselves, they have completely different titles to the ones that you picked (both the short and longer versions). This goes against the Hacker News Guidelines [0] which state: "...Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." Indeed, a general rule on Hacker News is not to editorialize headlines (ie make up headlines that look good in order to attract people to click on the link). This does of course raise the question of whether the Hacker News Guidelines are a good idea or not and I am torn on this one. On the one hand, I suppose there are occasions where a headline can be made clearer and more useful by rewriting it. On the other hand, I see the current guidelines as a backlash against the state of linkbait headlines on Reddit when Hacker News was first created all those years ago. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html