News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on WW.com Sold in Private. Parent comment

Re:WW.com Sold in Private by dang on Thursday June 26, 2014 @01:40PM (#7950730)
In general, HN tries to emphasize content, not personalities. So this was a clear case for reverting to the article title, even though you're right that jacquesm is the only reason why people here (including me!) would find it interesting.

It sometime happens that a story makes it to the front page because of some bait that was added to the title (in this case, to add social interest where intellectual interest was lacking), whereupon a moderator removes the bait from the title. This is not a bad pattern if you think about it. It's ok for the front page to have a few such stories, but they shouldn't dominate it. And once a story makes the front page, it should stand on its own.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WW.com Sold in Private by jacquesm on Thursday June 26, 2014 @02:03PM (#7950833)
I totally agree with the sentiment here, applying that even-handedly is going to be hard though. Plenty of articles about frequent HN contributors had the HN handle in the title, and in the future you're going to have to decide between 'original titles only' and this 'emphasize content, not personalities' policy.

Two samples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214397

But those were not on 'your watch' so I'm 100% on board with your new policy.

Quite a few blog posts carry the name of the blogger in the domain as well, which emphasizes personality rather than content, that's going to be harder to get rid of.

Anyway, I didn't even expect this to be on HN at all, it's been a roller coaster month of negotiations and traveling, I'm happy it's done. Now to repair the website, amazing how many dependencies on a domain name creep in over the years!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WW.com Sold in Private by larrys on Thursday June 26, 2014 @01:59PM (#7950817)
In this case I agree with you (stands on its own) but otoh I think in terms of some of the major contributors to HN a less interesting story is often worth reading just for that fact.

As the person who posted the story I would have posted it regardless of whether Jacques was involved or not. But of course I definitely recognized that if I included his name it would have a much better chance of garnering interest.

[ Parent | on HN ]