Moderators updated the title from the submitted “Transfer of Power (Guido Stepping Down as Python BDFL)” to this representative quotation from the article. The guidelines ask for the original title unless it's misleading or clickbait, and the original title in this case is borderline by being vague. This isn't a change in policy, but this is a case that probably could go either way.

It's a direct quote from the email. Do you think it was taken out of context in a way that communicates editorial intent? Seems pretty directly connected to the contents of the message to me.

Quote from the text used to be the most common type of editorializing to be reverted/disallowed before... And at any rate, I said it could be for the better - I've just been noticing this more and more.

It’s journalistic, but is not misleading. “[python-committers] Transfer of power - Guido van Rossum” would be more verbatim, but I think the title is okay.

Sigh I'm not saying it's not okay in this case, I'm saying that I believe this would've been disallowed before because we didn't want it to be up to people's judgement whether it is okay or not.

It’s not an article, and doesn’t have a title, so I don’t know what I’d suggest, personally. We have no idea if the title came from the submitter or a moderator, also.

When you see them, let the mods know via the Contact link in the footer. They don't see everything and update the ones they know about.

It's very often the mods who editorialize (often you can see some reasoning in the comments), so it is definitely not an issue of them not knowing, rather a change of policy.

I'm not sure I follow. They update the ones they are aware of that need changing, and often comment when they do. The existence of mods commenting and changing some titles doesn't imply that they see all of the ones that need changing. I've read comments by them stating outright that they don't see everything.

Have you seen comments made by them that indicate a change in policy other than those mentioned in the guidelines? Has there been a substantive change in the intent of the guidelines as currently written over time?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Editing is not the same as editorializing.

I expect that has little or nothing to do with dang and a lot more to do with the increased population of HN users.

It makes a LOT more sense than "Transfer of Power" does.