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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

Request: change the title by appending "fiction" so that folks like me don't start reading to try and figure out how the hell a person can be sued while in the womb.

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That's why I liked it. Made you think and put it all together. IMHO

Agreed. I think a key aspect of this sort of fiction is that you are not quite sure at first if it's real or not. It is interesting to see just how crazy a message can be communicated before you realize that it's not real.

I don't know. The conversation at the start doesn't have enough context to mean anything by itself, and then the first full paragraph is enough to show that it's fiction. The illusion doesn't last long enough to be useful; all I got out of it was wasteful confusion on the first 30 seconds..

Perhaps you haven't been involved with as much legal action as I have, but I was about half way through before I realised that it wasn't real. Of course I feel like I have to go to court at least once a week for something or other (sued ~= suing). In fact I have to go start legal action against someone today.

...yet.

I'd prefer instead that it just be switched to the original title "Nanolaw with Daughter", either with or without the subtitle "Why privacy mattered".

While the current title isn't bad, I think it's better to discourage the editorialization of titles, whether by adding tags such as "fiction" or by using catchy excerpts.

How about "Short story about privacy has daughter sued in the womb (ftrain.com)." I've been reading HN for around 6 months and lots of people have been suggesting that content quality is falling recently and there've been a lot of meta discussions about it. I think that the comments haven't degraded as much as people are claiming. The posted articles and the post titles have however been taking a turn for the worse. I agree with the parent: we don't need tags to indicate the category of the post. That's just lazy. What we need is just more honesty and less sensationalism in the wording of the titles. Maybe pg could add a system wherein anyone can edit a title and others vote on it? or perhaps foster a community where misleading titles are down voted?

I think the existing title is significantly better than the rather unenlightening "Nanolaw with Daughter," and I don't think it's better to discourage the "editorialization" of titles (when by editorialization you just mean changing them.) Many titles as linked to are poorly chosen for a linkblog format and would be better off changed for the front page. Few enough people change them as is.

The title is from Paul Ford (the author) himself, on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ftrain/status/69952439767404544

I am sure I am in the minority here, but I rather like the editorialization of titles. I read articles that I generally would not have due to bland titling. On occasion it is material that helps to change my viewpoint on matters.

I agree. The HN rules say not to change the title at all; to leave it as on the article being linked to. So this articles title should be "Nanolaw with Daughter".

I really have no idea what you are talking about. The rules[1] explicitly give some examples of when titles should be changed, and remark that title changes in general are fine if they aren't overly editorialized.

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ok, I was mistaken that it is against the rules. You are right, it is fine to change the title if it doesn't put too much of an editorial spin on it. My apologies.

Having said that, the title in this case was changed to emphasize something which only made up a small part of the story: that the fictitious daughter was first sued in the womb. This is only briefly mentioned in the story itself, so the title editing looks a little bit like link-baiting to me, which is why I would have preferred if it were left unedited.

Of course, another HN poster pointed out that the author posted the title on twitter. Since I do not know or follow the author, I did not know that when I wrote my first comment, at which point it looked like the title was changed purely for the purpose of catching peoples attention. Had I known this 9 hours ago, I probably wouldn't have commented.

There's precedent to change titles for old articles, such as adding "(2005)" to the end of a piece from 2005. There's also precedent to add "[pdf]" when linking directly to a pdf. I think adding "(fiction)" is in line with that.

I agree, I go to hacker news for news and tech related true stories. I don't mind fiction, but I don't like to be "tricked" into reading it.

Agreed if only to stay firmly on our side of the clickbait line.

There was a giant picture and no summary, so I skipped straight here to find out whether I wanted to read it. Obviously I don't.

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