I meant "anodyne" not as a good thing but as "the best we can come up with for now", i.e. at least it wouldn't provoke a big argument about linkbait. That's why I asked readers to suggest something better. Nobody did, so maybe it was just hard.

What the HN guidelines say about titles has been the same for years:

  Please use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

We deliberately avoid having detailed policies, but in this case we can derive a few corollaries. What we want is the opposite of what we don't want:

  1a. A good title is accurate and netural.

The reason for preferring the original title is to let the text speak for itself, so:

  1b. When changing a title, try to find representative language 
      from the article, rather than making something up.

And since one big reason for the guideline is to minimize bikeshed-style complaining about titles:

  1c. The best way to comment that a title is bad is to suggest a better one.