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

Posted by zachallaun on Thursday October 27, 2011 @04:07PM
from the you-decide dept.

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 | 5 points | on HN )

Poll

Submitted titles should always mirror the original. 3 votes

Descriptive titles should be favored. 9 votes

I don't care either way. 0 votes

Re:Poll: Do you believe informative titles should be swapped... by Caspian on Friday October 28, 2011 @01:03PM (#3169090)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poll: Do you believe informative titles should be swapped... by pg on Thursday October 27, 2011 @04:11PM (#3165277)

It's not a trend; we've always done it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poll: Do you believe informative titles should be swapped... by mooism2 on Thursday October 27, 2011 @05:26PM (#3165639)

What's the rationale for it?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poll: Do you believe informative titles should be swapped... by pg on Thursday October 27, 2011 @05:43PM (#3165723)

http://reddit.com

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poll: Do you believe informative titles should be swapped... by mooism2 on Friday October 28, 2011 @04:18AM (#3167460)

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?

[ Parent | on HN ]