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How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq
- JadeNB 11y agoWhy was the title changed from the blog post's title ("How I nearly almost saved the Internet ...")?
- martinml 11y agoI think it might be considered linkbait, and that's discouraged in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- forgottenpass 11y agoHN moderators edit submission titles so that they match the submitted articles. Except in the cases where they arbitrarily change it to their liking. Like turning "laid off" into "let go."
- skwosh 11y agoIf only there was a way to submit both the original title and some kind of summary...
- dang 11y agoWe don't change titles arbitrarily and we certainly don't euphemize. Turning "laid off" into "let go" sounds like nothing we'd do, and there's nothing like it in the logs, so I don't believe we did this.
- jallmann 11y agoIMO the newer title enforcement policies are worse than the old ones. The old ones might have been unreasonably rigid, but at least they were consistent. Right now the policy is "Keep the original title... unless we feel like it." The definition of "linkbait" here is so vague that it destroys any possibility for creative expression (remember the days when writing a good headline was an art?) and reinforces the notion that HN has no sense of humor. That's without getting into the separate tendency that original user-submitted titles (whether or not it matches the article title) often capture the essence of what's actually interesting to the audience here. Subsequent edits then lose that association -- making it less likely that I (or other people) will click through. Linkbait, you say? That's the whole point, I say. In this case: Sure, the article's original title was hyperbolic. But so what? It's hyperbolic to good effect, and gives a feel for the tone of the rest of the article.
- dang 11y agoHN's title policy hasn't changed since 2012. People sometimes mistakenly think we say to use the original title no matter what, but that's never been the case. If we allowed linkbait in titles, the threads would mostly be about linkbait in titles. This effect is strong, reliable, and immediate. Therefore we don't allow linkbait in titles. As for "unless we feel like it," nothing could be less true. The way we edit titles isn't algorithmic but it's at least semi-objective, and you'd be surprised at how meticulous we are. It's easy to defend in nearly any specific case (we make mistakes, of course, but that's not a policy), which is why when people complain about it, they tend to either kvetch vaguely or use inaccurate examples.
- jallmann 11y agoThe written guidelines might not have changed, but the enforcement policies certainly have. So instead of complaining about linkbait in titles, people complain about changing the title. Always going to be something to complain about... Anyway, I understand it's a hard thing to balance systematically. Titles aside, HN is still a much improved place under the "new regime". Thanks for your ongoing efforts with transparency and communication here.
- joosters 11y agoThe crossed out '2025' in the timeline is bizarre. Have I missed some joke here, or does the author not like to use the delete key?
- detaro 11y agoProbably fixed it after publishing the article, and wants to keep corrections visible?
- iagox86 11y agoThis. Somebody pointed out my typo on Twitter. :)
- tom_walker 11y agoyes, its a joke. vendors take a long time to respond, sometimes :-)
- viraptor 11y agoI really didn't expect dnsmasq to count the number of hops. I found a very similar issue in systemd-resolved, but with a different fix: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.systemd.devel/25160 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.systemd.devel/... The compressed label should never be allowed to refer to itself in the first place, so there's no point in counting how many times you loop.