4 ms·

Please add a more descriptive title. Is that some kind of autobiographic short story? Is it something that teaches how to be a better entrepreneur/developer/des

by erikb 12y ago

Please add a more descriptive title. Is that some kind of autobiographic short story? Is it something that teaches how to be a better entrepreneur/developer/designer? What kind of people would be interested in reading that? edit why is it so hard to say that there is a novel to read and not some specific information? It's okay to be a novel, but some people don't want to read novels.

cjbprime 12y ago
Sometimes people just write about their experiences, and it's your job to work out what lessons to take away from it, not theirs.
- erikb 12y ago
  Sometimes you have to think about which articles you open to read and the title should tell you.
  - aeze 12y ago
    Or you could spend a few seconds skimming through and see if it interests you. If you're that busy you probably shouldn't be on HN to begin with.
    - erikb 12y ago
      You are right, and I basically do that and mostly write that kind of comment only to threads where I don't have an idea if I want to read it or not, even after skimming through (the first page) of that kind of article. Look. No matter how wrong or stupid I act, If 10k people watch your link and everyone spends a second considering if they should click it or not, then that's a lot more time compared to choosing a title that says more about what to expect after the click, right? So even if I'm the biggest douche on the planet, we might still agree that it's worth for a link poster to spend some time about its title instead of just copy&pasting the article title.
      - aeze 12y ago
        Fair enough, I agree.
FatalLogic 12y ago
I submitted this. I would have preferred to use a more descriptive title, but HN guidelines discourage changing titles. "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It's not misleading, I think, just uninformative.
- erikb 12y ago
  That's good to know! I would interpret it differently, though. The idea, as far as I see it, is that you don't use title changes to increase the attention, e.g., avoiding to use upper case. But you should certainly use the title to increase the information density, e.g. 'translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X,"'. But I see your point.

by erikb 12y ago

cjbprime 12y ago

Sometimes people just write about their experiences, and it's your job to work out what lessons to take away from it, not theirs.

erikb 12y ago
Sometimes you have to think about which articles you open to read and the title should tell you.
- aeze 12y ago
  Or you could spend a few seconds skimming through and see if it interests you. If you're that busy you probably shouldn't be on HN to begin with.
  - erikb 12y ago
    You are right, and I basically do that and mostly write that kind of comment only to threads where I don't have an idea if I want to read it or not, even after skimming through (the first page) of that kind of article. Look. No matter how wrong or stupid I act, If 10k people watch your link and everyone spends a second considering if they should click it or not, then that's a lot more time compared to choosing a title that says more about what to expect after the click, right? So even if I'm the biggest douche on the planet, we might still agree that it's worth for a link poster to spend some time about its title instead of just copy&pasting the article title.
    - aeze 12y ago
      Fair enough, I agree.

FatalLogic 12y ago

I submitted this. I would have preferred to use a more descriptive title, but HN guidelines discourage changing titles. "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It's not misleading, I think, just uninformative.

erikb 12y ago
That's good to know! I would interpret it differently, though. The idea, as far as I see it, is that you don't use title changes to increase the attention, e.g., avoiding to use upper case. But you should certainly use the title to increase the information density, e.g. 'translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X,"'. But I see your point.