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Comment by spa3thyb | Hacker News Reader

This is probably just evidence that I care about something unimportant, but sharing this after noticing a diminishing change today:

In first, US surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

↓

U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

in reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882912

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You aren’t alone. I’ve noticed a major uptick in these types of editorial changes that remove or obscure the intent of the underlying content. They don’t seem to follow a consistent editorial standard or voice, and are having a noticeable effect on the quality of the HN UX.

Do we know who is doing these edits and why?

You could ask the mods why directly about the pig heart article, if you’re seriously interested, using the footer contact link. I wouldn’t do this for every edit and expect a reply, but it seems like asking them to chime in here for a single case study would be simpler and more factual than guessing at reasoning, and I imagine they’re probably willing.

It could be the submitter, the software, or the mods. For example, the submitter did this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29879165

but the mods did this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29879184

Peter's tool doesn't tend to pick up software edits because most of those happen on submission, which is before the tool picks them up.

Since you seem to be logging edit history internally, how about making that visible to users? There would be a lot less confusion and paranoia around if it were obvious when an edit was made and by whom.

Alas, I think the odds are that there would be more, not less. Certainly there would be a lot more fodder for it. These things don't explain themselves, after all; we still have to do that, and it's a ton of work. It's also stressful—it's all public, and if you screw up in any way, you can easily generate more hostility and more work for yourself.

I think the current approach, in which we don't publish everything we do but are happy to answer specific questions when people ask them, is the right balance.

There's no uptick. The mod practices around titles haven't changed in many years.

It's also probably a lot more consistent than it seems. That doesn't translate into perception, though, because people tend to notice the ones that annoy them. I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23954907

I like the latter title better; I can understand the editorial stance because “first” does sound a bit click bait like.

And that's the problem: it's an editorial stand that finds the thought offensive that any news headline is ever clicked on. So it removes anything that makes it sound "too interesting" even if it happens to also be an accurate statement.

In the case of the pig's heart, there is no doubt that it is the first such transplant. Arguably, people know as much and it doesn't need to be pointed out. But it's borderline and with a bit of appreciation of the fact that headlines are creative works just as much as the text, I'd argue for a bit more deference to the people who have probably put a lot more thought into the headline.

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