I don't think pg and co. have ever responded to complaints about changed titles. Probably the policy of HN I like the least.
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#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ever heard of research.microsoft.com? Yes. The submission clearly says microsoft.com, not research.microsoft.com Didn't you know that HN shows the research subdomain in submission titles? EDIT: Sorry, this reply sounds a bit snarky. EDIT2: I'm wrong! Thanks to TeMPOraL for pointing out my error about HNSearch and HN.
> The submission clearly says microsoft.com, not research.microsoft.com. Didn't you know that HN shows the research subdomain in submission titles? Oops. I didn't. Is there somewhere a written collection of rules to learn?
Well, I only know this because I just now did a search for research.microsoft.com after your message. :-)
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#23There's a guideline that you're not supposed to editorialise titles. When an editorialised title is detected, it is usually corrected. I happen to disagree with this policy and I think it's a somewhat overly rigid application of the guidelines. However, this is why it's happening, and it makes some sense from at least one perspective. And, after all, this is entirely pg's call to make.
I submitted this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5181742 Which included David Byrne's (slightly misinformed) thoughts on the Aaron Swartz case. As such I titled it something like "David Byrne on Aaron Swartz" - it was changed to "Civil Disobedience" (the title of the blog article). Although the old title may be have been guilty of "editorialisation" in some sense, the new title gives no indication of wh…
And I think the more important point is that there should be an indication that the title has been edited by a mod, and perhaps also show the original submitter title in the article page.
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#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's pretty obvious that an article from MS is going to be talking about how MS does stuff Ever heard of research.microsoft.com?
> Ever heard of research.microsoft.com? Yes. The submission clearly says microsoft.com, not research.microsoft.com Didn't you know that HN shows the research subdomain in submission titles? EDIT: Sorry, this reply sounds a bit snarky. EDIT2: I'm wrong! Thanks to TeMPOraL for pointing out my error about HNSearch and HN.
LOL it does?
'HN to show subdomains' is, I think, number 1 requested feature, but it never was officially done. Is there a whitelist of domains somewhere that get their subdomains shown?
EDIT
Except it doesn't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4136016, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6108151, et al.
Make sure to remember that a) lots of HN plugins fix that, and b) hnsearch is NOT HN, even though it looks similar.
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#25I will just quote what I said a few days ago: It's worse than that. Since you can't editorialize titles and some authors like to give their articles poetic, meaningless names like "A butterfly in the sky," when the actual article talks about a security exploit in Bitcoin, coded in Go and released by Wikileaks. I often find myself ignoring interesting articles on HN only to go read them later on reddit with a much mor…
It's kind of funny, I find myself doing the opposite--when I see a completely meaningless title on the HN front page, I assume it's actually something much more interesting and a mod de-editorialized it into meaninglessness, so I click through to see what it is.
But that's not a road we want to walk down, imagine if every title was meaningless!
The point of titles should be to give an informing mini-summary about the topic.
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#26Posting an entry on HN changes its original context - it is, in itself, a hermeneutic act, performed by posting, upvoting as well as retitling it. Changing the title back to its "original" state is not only naïve, but also counters HN's raison d'être .
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#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The submission clearly says microsoft.com, not research.microsoft.com. Didn't you know that HN shows the research subdomain in submission titles? Oops. I didn't. Is there somewhere a written collection of rules to learn?
Well, I only know this because I just now did a search for research.microsoft.com after your message. :-)
Then I think you're mistaking HNSearch interface (unofficial search for HN) with the HN itself ;). The former shows subdomains, the latter does not.
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#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kind of funny, I find myself doing the opposite--when I see a completely meaningless title on the HN front page, I assume it's actually something much more interesting and a mod de-editorialized it into meaninglessness, so I click through to see what it is.
But that's not a road we want to walk down, imagine if every title was meaningless! The point of titles should be to give an informing mini-summary about the topic.
It wouldn't be that bad--being on the front page is itself a prequalification, and being on the front page despite having a meaningless title means it's on the front page for reasons other than being linkbait. Removing titles altogether might make things more meritocratic, actually (if a little more painful for the people who only click things if they're about a certain topic.)
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#29IMHO the new title was clearer than the old one as (a) it doesn't require the reader recognise a vulnerability that was patched 15 years ago; and (b) it notes the problem is IPv6-related. Neither the old nor the new title mentions that it's a Windows-only vulnerability.
I agree there should be some marker to show the title has been edited, but I don't disagree with this particular edit.
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#30This thread will probably disappear soon as one of the few rules that is actually enforced on HN is the "no talk about moderation" one. You should instead (per the rules) e-mail info@ycombinator.com with your concerns.