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Comment by nether | Hacker News Reader

On a sidenote, it looks like the HN policy of preserving original headlines is completely out the window.

One temporary deviation does not a policy change make. We can't control what users do!

(Submitted title was "Tiffany Co. CEO on environmental impact of jewelry". Since the original title isn't misleading or linkbait, the guideline would say not to change it, so we changed it back.)

I'm still very much for the idea of having both the original title and an editorialised title which would largely avoid these "why was the title altered" exchanges. Similarly when a source link is changed the original link should be kept, some people like to read other's interpretation of the source, other people like to read the original and digest it themselves; oftentimes it's nice to read both.

Who chooses the editorialized title? It can't be the submitter; submitters aren't supposed to have a privileged position.

I'd have thought the submitter would put one if they felt it was needed or a mod could put one if the submitter hadn't. If the submitter puts a bad title then I guess it might still need editing ... so still space for those that want to argue about it! Win-win!!

It's a principle of HN that submitters don't get extra privileges w/r/t stories. Once they're posted, they're community property. So the feature you propose can't be as simple as a second text input for the editorialized title: that gives the submitter a kind of "super-comment" that other community members don't get.

But submissions themselves are a sort of super-comment, and you get to put a meta comment if you want to ...

The only solution that I can see that avoids "priveleges" is to actually give mod priveleges that allow a cadre of users to give a [sub-]title iff they respect neutrality of the title.

Going this far seems a bit OTT though whilst there do seem to be less than perfect options that are better than the current position.

Apropos of nothing, I noticed the CSS for mobile has been tweaked recently. I can comfortably read comments in portrait mode on my Android now, thank you very much!

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10489499

And did a great disservice.

OP here. I wasn't aware of this policy. I rewrote the original headline because I found it not very descriptive. Headlines are often clickbaiting or impressionistic. I'd rather have it say clearly what's in the article.

I don't really understand the policy. Earlier this week the article about the journalist who tried to bit a barrel of oil had its title changed after the fact to not match the original.

We change it when it's sensational or not descriptive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com