Was the title automatically editorialized? The article clearly says it's "The" man who coined the word "Robot"
Despite a policy of "use original titles", the HN software automatically mangles titles. This is one of the more bizarre auto-editing of titles it does because of how pointless it feels. "The man who" is established English convention. "A man who" is changing the meaning for the sake of it without producing a clearer title. The person is unambiguously defined, so the definitive article is entirely correct. If the per…
My experience is that, if a moderator hasn't touched it, the title of a story remains editable throughout the edit window of the first two hours. It doesn't matter what automatic changes were applied to the title on submission; they are not reapplied when you edit.
I restore the original title if HN's software changes it poorly. When I look at /newest or even the front page, it seems few submitters do. Either they are unaware of the possibility, or they think it isn't allowed. (AFAICT, it is allowed as long as you don't use it to break the guidelines. Here is a recent comment by dang saying you can do it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38993985.)