An example would be something a corporation is obligated to publish due to legal reasons, but it is not in their interest to drag attention to whatever it is.
Of course I understand that one of the pillars of the success of HN is this specific rule ("do not editorialize"). But is there an escape hatch for such cases?
This is one of those questions that is easy to answer once you understand that HN is all about optimizing for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
If an article is particularly interesting and you think its title is going to prevent it from getting attention, then break the rule. Having the most interesting stories on the front page is more important than following a rule. That follows from what we're optimizing for.
The title rule is mainly trying to prevent sensationalism and promotion from crowding out the quieter, more intellectually interesting sort of submission. So if your motive is actually intellectual curiosity, we're not going to rap your knuckles. (On the other hand, people mostly break the title rule gratuitously and/or for sensationalism or promotion, and that sucks.)
If you want to be conscientious, you can always email us a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. One advantage of doing that is that if we agree the article is particularly interesting, we'll probably put it in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it will get a random placement on HN's front page. And if the article isn't particularly interesting, then I wouldn't advise breaking the rule.
One is the policy that misleading, clickbait, or in practice, needlessly vague titles, can be replaced by text elsewhere in the article. Dang:
I changed it to the title of one of the sections. This is a trick we often use when the article title (which is often by a headline writer, not the article author) is linkbait or misleading. Assuming it covers the scope of the article, it's often better.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7619019
If you're not comfortable with that, or if you want further guidance, email the mods. hn@ycombinator.com The team is quite responsive (it's a team, though you'll hear from dang). And they welcome suggestions for clarifying titles.
Where I do see clickbait in titles (often when someone's pointed this out in discussion), I'll email mods and give suggestions based on my read of the text. They'll often use my suggestion or something close to it (though not always).
You can also recommend articles for the 2nd chance queue (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool), again by email. I tend to nominate others' posts, though dang's made clear that self-noms are also permitted.
Still further options:
- Find a source with a better headline. That might be hard for, say, corporate announcements, where "primary source" trumps headline, but is often viable for other materials. Anything to goad sites into more accurate and less-baity heads is a win.
- Write your own blog piece (with sufficient original take) and compose your own title that is clear, non-baity, and descriptive. Submit that.
I'd suggested for the recent "How this ends" piece, "how does this market meltdown that we are now in end", from text in the article itself.
That was not adopted.
a "subtitle" isn't a subtitle its just a comment, the author/editor/etc write a subtitle.
people are going to start responding to subtitles.
That comment won't be distinguished in the discussion, though it will be the first-appearing comment, which can sometimes be useful in steering discussion. I attempt to steer in the direction HN itself generally encouarges: to deeper inquiry, benefit of the doubt, and charitable interpretation.