> The moderators here humor and even encourage it, despite it nominally being a rule not to editorialize titles they'll humor the people and edit it up 2 or 3 times.
For what it's worth, a few times recently (as well as on other occasions) I've submitted a title as-is very reluctantly, and knowing it will certainly be changed if the submission gets any traction.
I think the one that got the most traction was 'The NHS is looking for up to 250k volunteers' [0], original title:
> ‘Your NHS Needs You’ – NHS call for volunteer army
Of course that was going to get changed, and I mostly support that change, with only slight hesitation since the aspect I found most interesting (and provoked me to submit it) was the language; the article went on to talk about 'rallying the troops'.
My point is, yes it's in the guidelines not to editorialise titles, but it also says not to include numbers like '{6 }things you never knew about X' or superfluous adjectives like 'Show HN: {My amazing }whitespace to rust transpiler'.
It also qualifies not editorialising with 'unless misleading or linkbait', which I suppose I could arguably have used as a reason to change [0], and perhaps that's the basis on which they're all edited.
I and probably others generally submit the original thinking if it's popular as-is then there may be some discussion and collective (or moderated) decision on the title; who am I the submitter to make that call.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677209