"Go is a Pretty Average Language" is linkbait, so following the rule means changing the title. That's the first thing to understand, and the next is just as important: when changing the title, what should one change it to? The answer is to look for representative language in the article itself [2]. Avoid making up new language if at all possible—that way the content gets to speak for itself, plus you avoid the errors that tend to creep in when the submitter writes a title themselves.
So the thing to do is to comb the article looking for a phrase that can serve as a better—i.e. more accurate and neutral—title. Subtitles are a great place to look, as are the URL, the HTML doc title, photo captions, the opening paragraph, and if necessary the bowels of the text. There have been cases where I've read a long article closely, only to fish out a perfect phrase that summarizes the entire article exactly, in the middle of the 26th paragraph. You can nearly always find something.
In this case, I used the subtitle, which wasn't exactly editorializing. But it wasn't clear that it really summarized the article either, but I wanted to try it as an experiment. Otherwise I wouldn't have posted a long explanation about what I was doing. Certainly a one-off experiment, just to see what would happen, does not mean that "anyone can justify breaking it for their own posts". If someone has an interesting idea for an experiment, I'm not against it (though they should probably let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we don't misunderstand and kill it). But it has zero implications for promotional licensing.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> In this case, I used the subtitle, which wasn't exactly editorializing.
Technically it is, in the sense that it's the editor's job in a publication to select exactly which citation best summarizes the content of the whole piece.
So I suggest to perhaps change the "don't editorialize" part to rule to better reflect the nuance of the subject.