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Poll: Do you believe informative titles should be swapped for original titles?

5 points by zachallaun ↗ HN
Something I've noticed: Articles are submitted with informative titles, only to be switched to their (sometimes non-informative, sometimes link-bait) original titles.

I believe that editorialized or misleading titles should be changed, but a descriptive title helps me decide what to read.

Perhaps I'm completely off on this one, but I was curious what others thought about this.

*small edit for accuracy.

5 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 13.0 ms ] thread
pg
It's not a trend; we've always done it.
mooism2
What's the rationale for it?
pg
http://reddit.com
mooism2
Reddit suffers from editorialising, yes. But this question was not about editorialising. It was about using a more descriptive title on HN, that makes more sense in the context of HN, instead of the link-baity/misleading original title from the article. Why is this a bad thing?
Caspian
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html advises making certain changes to titles, and says you can make up your own titles, and said "Please don't do things to make titles stand out". There was a warning that a submitted editorialising title may be edited.

I generalised that to changing any link-bait (or otherwise unsuitable) title to something that better fits the intent of this site, which I think is a good guideline.