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Comment by cutler | Hacker News Reader

<rant>Cryptic titles seem to be commonplace these days for some reason. If you want me to read your article please take the trouble to spell-out the subject matter.</rant>

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To be fair, most places where you would discover or read these articles show more context than just the title. HN is fairly unique in showing only titles, and having a general policy of not changing the title.

You WON'T BELIEVE what I have to say about your rant!

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Regarding this specific... Read More: https://write.as/he5fox6god86m.md

I suspect that they're common, because they create curiosity, which leads to clicks. Those clicks (if the article is good) end up leading to upvotes.

So, I suppose the answer is we're in a marketplace that probably prefers cryptic titles

<subrant>What's even worse, and equally common, is no date on the article or if there is a date it's hidden away somewhere near the bottom of the content. These things are just so basic. I think we need to resurrect Jakob Nielson and get him on the speaker circuit again.</subrant>

The date is right above the title in this case.

I was generalising about what is common in the subrant so maybe it should have read "when there is no date on the article".

On a related note, I've noticed lately that Google has been giving me old results that show up as having recent dates, even though there's no date anywhere on the page (or it was grabbed from a random Disqus comment), and the content is clearly outdated (and often blogspam). I wonder if DuckDuckGo is any better...

To offer a counterpoint - this is a blog post made by Fred Wilson with the exact same title. Fred has the prerogative to title his posts whichever way he likes, and I would not want some random HN poster to add a subtitle to Fred's title.

What is an acceptable title in your opinion? "Fred Wilson who is a famous VC speculates about the state of the economy"?

And yet, here we are.

Agreed 100%. It's just dumb. "How this Ends". Uhh... what?

Are you sure they want you to read their article? Cryptic titles get shared on HN and get clicked. Enough people read them, so do they really care if you read it?

Even if you end-up reading the article you do so in a state of annoyance which is usually does not help the author's cause.

“You” doesn’t equate to everyone.

"You" as in a less formal version of "one".

Except everyone isn’t annoyed by cryptic titles. More people are (at worst) neutral to them than are put off by them.

The reaction of one rando to a cryptic title doesn’t particularly matter. The publication is appealing to their audience (as a whole) not to me (or “you”).

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