Because HN used to be above that linkbait BS.
The story is interesting and useful and stands up on its own without having to resort to "in only 300 lines!!!".
The story is interesting and useful and stands up on its own without having to resort to "in only 300 lines!!!".
Notice how it's a self post? It's not some grand ploy to get more pageviews for a blog. What's bullshit is that half of the comments section is being taken up by this contentless debate. That's the actual poison on HN.
Are linkbait BS titles the cancer that is killing /HN?
Granted, HN used to be above romanticizing the past... :-)
What's the solution to that, I almost daren't mention it, could it be a dig like toolbar that wraps the story (I'm assuming you mean external articles). Perhaps better would be a personal list (like Reddit) of recently viewed posts.
Alternatively one could have a sort of moderation view for trusted users so that pages like /new would give the story link with a first paragraph and up/flag/down buttons for fast rating. That way standard users time on pages like /new or /noobstories wouldn't need to be spent on spam so much.
Not that spam appears to be a huge problem here but as things grow optimisations become more important IMO.