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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Ok, we'll change to that from https://twitter.com/AggressiveCurl/status/156616119824850944.... Thanks!

Just spitballing, but this changing of source url reminds me of an idea I had a while back. In cases like this, where the url is changed from source, the old url should still be linked. Maybe as a sub title, or perhaps there should be a separate "changed" link on posts like this. The changed link could show title or url source changes.

The old url is linked in the url-changed comment. Sometimes there's a pinned topcomment with the old url or the url of a merged thread, if the url change is likely to really confuse.

I'm curious if anyone's been keeping track of title and url changes. HN's small enough that one could easily hold the data. Someone has a page showing recent title changes,[1] but without retention. In that thread is a link to a browser extension that does the same, but I can't tell if its scraping is client-side (probably) or if there's a server.

1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617016

These kinds of edits, without edit history, seem ripe for abuse

How? And how would edit history realistically stop the admins who could modify the edit history?

One of the few times 'the blockchain' might be a sensible answer, silly as the premise of url or title attack is.

True, but blockchains only help if you have multiple copies of the chain. With one copy, there’s nothing stoping the owner from rewriting history. It’s why companies saying they’re “investing in blockchains” means nothing; DB replication/redundancy doesn’t stop a malicious owner.

So unless we’re all gonna start storing copies of HN’s database(s) on our home computers and phones, a blockchain won’t help stop abuse. Speaking of which, how big would said copies be?

It all boils down to the fact that dang, the admin who does the edits, has a history of doing these changes quite rarely and within reason, plus he always leaves comments when he does so. That approach awarded him some general trust, including mine.

> plus he always leaves comments when he does so

How do you know this?

It takes one scandal stemming from a hostile link change to take this sort of reputation down. Since all of that information is public, to paraphrase Linus, with enough eyes, all HN link changes are shallow.

Is it public? I don't see a history attached to posts.

He does do this, and based on reputation it's perfectly fine. But I'd personally prefer to see this as part of the api and UI.

Part of the issue is that it isn't that rare. I guess because I'm reading HN all the time these changes seem fairly frequent, despite overall submission volume. I also have the same trust.

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