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Poll: Should there be guidelines against sensationalist titles?

21 points by j_baker ↗ HN
I feel that this is a recurring issue on HN. For instance, I feel that the title for this article is pretty sensationalist: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042793

Although this is largely subjective, I see two problems:

1. It rewards the organizations who use sensationalism rather than content to generate pageviews.

2. The quality of comments in such postings seems to be below the usual HN standards.

Does anyone else agree with me, or am I the only one who feels this way?

11 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 58.0 ms ] thread
sophacles
You should have done A/B testing and also submitted this poll under the title: "Sensationalist titles killing hacker news". I bet you would learn a lot there... :P
petercooper
But Zuckerburg says "if we were starting [FaceBook] now and we decided that [the default sharing of information now] would be the social norms now and we just went for it." wouldn't really get the message across..

Anyway, there's already a guideline:

You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it.

So editors are already rewriting headlines, and I've seen it done. Perhaps a compromise would be to extend that guideline to suggesting editors may edit actual headlines, although I'd be sad to see it since writing punchy headlines is an art. If the story were false or overly sensational, should we be voting it up?

So I vote no; let the votes gauge quality, not guidelines. But I'd have no big beef with HN moderators editing the headlines where they were over the top.

anonjon
You need some guidelines so that you know how to vote/when to flag.

It is very possible that I like an article and hate the misleading headline.

mmt
It is very possible that I like an article and hate the misleading headline.

In this situation, I both upvote and flag. Typically, if the title is sensationalist enough and the article is good, there will have been enough upvotes to prevent automatic deletion.

j_baker
Alright, but I'd argue at a very minimum that headlines at least shouldn't be misleading like the zuckerburg one. After all don't we already have a guideline to omit the x from "x things about y"? Isn't that editing the original title?
pg
We already do edit titles. Particularly Smashing Magazine type titles ("50 CSS Guides You Have to Read Now" -> "CSS Guides"), those that bait HN specifically, and those that are false, like this one. We also fix typos and solecisms in titles, even if they occur in the original.
ivankirigin
We need a standard for changing a title to convey it is clearly heavily editorial.

It should say the name and as bland a topic summary as possible, in part as punishment for clickbait.

In this case, perhaps: "Marshall Kirkpatrick on facebook privacy settings"

stilist
I feel there should be a rule against posters creating sensationalist titles when submitting, but titles reproduced from an article should only be edited in egregious cases. The Zuckerberg one is debatable since it’s not an actual quote.

While linkbait titles are increasingly popular on the web, we needn’t embrace the least common denominator.

mechanical_fish
I believe we have a guideline against sensationalist titles. Although it's called "editorializing in titles".

Unfortunately, reality does not automatically conform to one's published specs. One has to wait for the moderators. And it's not as if every troll who turns up on the web is a code blue emergency, so there's no terrible sense of urgency here.

pg
That is a particularly egregious one, which I just fixed. I was there, and he said nothing of the sort. Frankly a lame move by Marshall to generate pageviews for an article with practically no content.