Look on the bright side - we've moved beyond the "I think you mean handegg" meme when people complain about American football vs rest-of-the-world football.

And, to be fair, I am an American and am certainly lame enough to complain when I see something Britishly done that I don't like. For example, when a BBC article is posted about UNICEF, their capitalization rules have them bizarrely spell it "Unicef".

Especially since "soccer" is actually English and not American slang. I'm not clear on the details on account of English slang delights in its incomprehensibility to outsiders, but apparently it's short for "association (football)."

> Complain when titles are changed.

> Complain when titles are printed verbatim as-is.

Unless you have in mind a specific instance of StevePerkins's doing both of these, you're not pointing out an inconsistency, just that you can't make everyone happy—which isn't a good reason on its own to write off any particular request.

> Complain when an article from Vox (an explicitly American website) is written from an American perspective.

I didn't see any complaint about anything, and even the request was made to HN, which, to my understanding, is not an explicitly American website, or at least welcomes an international audience. I did not see even an implicit suggestion that Vox should change their headline.

You should assume good intent. Unless you specifically know that the specific user you replied to have complained about both you should not put words in their mouth.

The article is about American football, but the headline is non-specific and I thought this website (and YC) was global?

I did say put it in brackets. Maybe square brackets would make it clearer it's an addition.

But this is not an only America centric website and hence the OP’s request. Never harms to have an accurate title when international audience is involved.

It made the headline harder to understand than necessary. I was confused at first.

Isn't "Handegg" the official term?

They're not exactly the same thing. Gridiron football is a whole category of football games, including the substantially similar US amateur and pro games, Canadian football, Arena football, etc. But all use the same type of ball and have forward passing, and so I agree that gridiron football probably is the more accurate term for this article. On the other hand, I don't feel like it's often used in real conversation.

It's not recognized in the US at all. The only time the phrase "gridiron football" is used ever in the world is during conversations like this.

There's something ironic in rewriting the names of a US sport in a title to make it understandable, but in a way that is unintelligible to people from the US.