But you've omitted the last title in that sequence, which is the one we ended up with (Gertrude Elion's “antiviral odyssey”). There's a partial explanation here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359017What you're seeing in that sequence is trial and error. Sometimes it takes a few tries before we find a solution that feels like it balances the different concerns. That's not particularly common, though, plus most of those exploratory edits are quickly overwritten by later edits, so Peter's app doesn't pick them up.
I'm happy in principle to satiate anyone's curiosity about this kind of thing—the only trouble is that it takes a surprising amount of time to write out such explanations in details, and unfortunately that time is just not often not available. What I can tell you is that (1) there is nearly always a specific reason for every title edit we do, and there are probably at least a hundred different considerations that come into it, based on 10+ years of experience at this point—this is a surprisingly complex subdomain!, and (2) we're highly responsive to user complaints about titles (or mod edits) in specific cases. Not just because we want users to be happy, but also because this has proven to be the only way to minimize the dreaded title fever (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) —which, btw, has had an outbreak in this very thread.
I've written longer explanations in the past about how we approach title editing in general. One is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573. If there are questions I'd be happy to answer them—but again, the more general the question, the more time/energy it takes to answer, so I may not be able to.
Actually I enjoy engaging with users about HN title edits because, of all the things we do, it's by far the best worked out. It's far more consistent than people think it is. Why does something consistent appear so inconsistent? Because it's more complicated than it seems. Why is title editing so complicated? Because titles are the biggest single influence on the site, and users are astonishingly passionate about them.