Yes this is a deeply annoying “feature” of HN

Which is amusing given the otherwise fairly strict doctrine of not modifying the source headline even when it would clarify what you're posting to give people a better context of what the link is about.

I'd rather these articles weren't posted at all

I’d rather read something like this occasionally instead of yet another submission focused on AI

How does this even happen? I assumed it was bad metadata in the article (which is usually the cause of this problem on social media in general) but everything there looks fine.

HN basically has some regexes it automatically applies to titles. Then sometimes it gets adjusted afterwards when the result turns out to be nonsense.

I've wondered this as well, I'd love to hear from the mods as to how many false positives vs true positives this generates. Us, the lowly users, only spot it when it mangles a title, but does it actually provide some tangible benefit?

I don't want to judge this 'feature' too harshly without that data, but couldn't 80% of the value of this be achieved by putting the text 'please don't editorialize titles of submissions except to de-clickbaitify them' in the submission form?

Or just use the <title> of the page verbatim? If it's clickbaity, it'll get downvoted, as it should.

Isn't it more likely the submitter chose the title? HN doesn't even auto-recommend a title for submitted content, and instead it's up to the submitter. In rare cases after the fact a mod like dang changes the title to remove editorialization.

So unsure what this whole thread of people complaining about HN supposedly mangling titles.

HN does remove some prefixes from titles automatically

Can you elaborate on how the two titles mean something different? To my reading, "Here's how they ..." and "How they ..." mean the same thing. "Here's" is unnecessary. (Not saying I agree with HN removing it automatically, just that in this case I don't think it changes the meaning.)

I don't think I follow. What is HN doing to the title? Deleting the word "Here's"?