And who does the changing? I've noticed several articles titles changing throughout the day. I also remember that one story I posted had the title changed.
Just wondering!
Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
1–8 of 8 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#2I believe it's HN mods who change titles that don't comply to the guidelines (e.g. misleading title) usually they just change the title to the title of the article.
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#3The Hacker News welcome message
http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
gives an overview of the community experiment here, summarizing the site guidelines.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
One of the guidelines is to prefer submitting original article titles:
"Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."
The Hacker News FAQ
http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
gives some additional details about how Hacker News is administered. The welcome message distills the basic rules into a simple statement: "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads."
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#4The Hacker News welcome message http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html gives an overview of the community experiment here, summarizing the site guidelines. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html One of the guidelines is to prefer submitting original article titles: "Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an ar…
hm I read that thing when I joined, but I guess memory is a funny thing!
Thanks for the answer :)
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#5I believe it's HN mods who change titles that don't comply to the guidelines (e.g. misleading title) usually they just change the title to the title of the article.
I wonder why the script doesn't just try to parse the metadata (and maybe H1) from the submitted site? That would impartially cover most cases, I think.
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#6[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#7I believe it's HN mods who change titles that don't comply to the guidelines (e.g. misleading title) usually they just change the title to the title of the article.
I wonder why the script doesn't just try to parse the metadata (and maybe H1) from the submitted site? That would impartially cover most cases, I think.
If a title is misleading or linkbait, we're meant to adjust it on submission. It'd be a good idea if the rule were just that you must use original titles, but it's a bit more nuanced and does seem to need some human oversight.
Re: Ask HN: Why do article titles arbitrarily change?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder why the script doesn't just try to parse the metadata (and maybe H1) from the submitted site? That would impartially cover most cases, I think.
If a title is misleading or linkbait, we're meant to adjust it on submission. It'd be a good idea if the rule were just that you must use original titles, but it's a bit more nuanced and does seem to need some human oversight.
Fair enough.