This blog entry is a bad one. Synchronization is a real problem. Dropbox and others are doing it quite well and will benefit from it. Microsoft's solution was subpar, but it is not a problem misidentification issue at all.
Cannot agree more with you on this. When I read this, Dropbox is the first thing which came to my mind.
"When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not."
My current employer has a bunch of sites like that as well - abandoned projects from years ago that have since been replaced by new things, but the website files are still there and the virtualhost block for it hasn't been removed.
The scary part is that these sites still manage to make a few sales each year.
I changed the title because it violated the HN guidelines about titles: it editorialized, it was linkbait (Microsoft's forgotten subdomain!), and it was misleading (how do we know what Microsoft forgot? how do we know there aren't many of them?).
HN calls for people to make up their own minds about content. It's not for the submitter to spin "the point" for everybody. Other websites allow that; HN does not. In my view, that is one of the best decisions PG ever put into the design of this site. It's controversial only because people don't notice all the good it does, which is enormous: it's one of the biggest factors in the quality of the front page.
the whole point of this post has now been lost
I disagree. It doesn't take much to see that this is a legacy Microsoft website that is still up. HN's title policy does lead to hard calls sometimes, but this wasn't really one of them.
This rule is fine for blogs where each article had an overt title that can be (and should be) referred to.
However, for simply linking to arbitrary websites, the "title" is often meaningless and does not convey the purpose of the submission. In these cases, I would argue that the title is part of the submission, and should not be messed with (unless it breaks other rules regarding spam, trolling, linkbait etc).
I see the point and yes, those cases tend to be where the harder calls come up. If you watch closely, you'll find that we're more flexible than it sometimes seems we are.
Our bedrock principle, though, is focus on content. The first person to submit an item doesn't get special rights to frame it for everybody. The content is what it is [1]. On HN, the submitter doesn't get to speak for the author; he or she is a reader like the rest of us.
The level playing field that HN's title policy creates is something it took me a long time to appreciate, so I get why it's not obvious. But the neutral, self-effacing quality we get by sticking close to original titles (unless they're misleading or linkbait) is a bit part of keeping the front page good.
[1] Yeah, I know it's all constructed and authorship is a myth—I did my time in grad school.
Which I think I originally titled something along the lines of "Proof of Concept code shows clients are vulnerable to HeartBleed"
or something like that - since the discussion actually showed a link to some PoC code. It was renamed back to the anodyne "What clients are proven to be vulnerable to Heartbleed?"
18 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 58.9 ms ] threadGroove 2006 -> Microsoft Office Groove 2007 -> SharePoint Workspace 2010 -> SkyDrive Pro -> OneDrive for Business (the current product)
"When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not."
The scary part is that these sites still manage to make a few sales each year.
Just cut it out already.
HN calls for people to make up their own minds about content. It's not for the submitter to spin "the point" for everybody. Other websites allow that; HN does not. In my view, that is one of the best decisions PG ever put into the design of this site. It's controversial only because people don't notice all the good it does, which is enormous: it's one of the biggest factors in the quality of the front page.
the whole point of this post has now been lost
I disagree. It doesn't take much to see that this is a legacy Microsoft website that is still up. HN's title policy does lead to hard calls sometimes, but this wasn't really one of them.
Only in the sense that the title was both the crucial to the content.
> it was misleading
I really don't understand why you think so.
> and it was linkbait.
Then the whole post should have deleted. Changing the title made it completely pointless.
> It doesn't take much to see that this is a legacy Microsoft website that is still up.
It really does. I was baffled until I read the comments.
> Please don't be rude to other users on Hacker News, even if they're a moderator.
I don't feel 'cut it out' could be deemed rude by any reasonable standard.
I'm also going to follow your suggestion and bury this post, since there's little if anything of substance here.
Maybe someday we'll even persuade you. :)
However, for simply linking to arbitrary websites, the "title" is often meaningless and does not convey the purpose of the submission. In these cases, I would argue that the title is part of the submission, and should not be messed with (unless it breaks other rules regarding spam, trolling, linkbait etc).
Just my 2c...
Our bedrock principle, though, is focus on content. The first person to submit an item doesn't get special rights to frame it for everybody. The content is what it is [1]. On HN, the submitter doesn't get to speak for the author; he or she is a reader like the rest of us.
The level playing field that HN's title policy creates is something it took me a long time to appreciate, so I get why it's not obvious. But the neutral, self-effacing quality we get by sticking close to original titles (unless they're misleading or linkbait) is a bit part of keeping the front page good.
[1] Yeah, I know it's all constructed and authorship is a myth—I did my time in grad school.
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
I had a similar problem with this submission:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7561847
Which I think I originally titled something along the lines of "Proof of Concept code shows clients are vulnerable to HeartBleed"
or something like that - since the discussion actually showed a link to some PoC code. It was renamed back to the anodyne "What clients are proven to be vulnerable to Heartbleed?"