I think the HN title is missing a “ … in the US” qualifier - looks like China has had several of these same model running for several years.
Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
The title is not the place to do this; on HN, being the submitter of an article doesn't confer any special right to frame the topic for everyone else. That's super important, because titles are overwhelmingly the dominant influence on discussion.
Editorializing headlines of a press release directed at a different audience with likely more context to make it accessible shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing. It spurs discussion.
Perhaps the boundaries of editorializing headlines need to move to accommodate for this. So long as there isn’t opinion inserted, it seems fine.
The earlier submissions title was imperfect for being too short and missing the qualifier “The first . . . In the US”
It often ends up spurring discussion about titles. Plus, HN has no shortage of discussion and comments do a pretty adequate job of spurring discussion. The 'level playing' thing in the linked bit is the key part, though - you don't get a megacomment (which is what writing your own title essentially ends up being) just because you posted something.
If the title, as we see here is very niche, it will not spur discussion from people not inherently familiar with why “Vogtle Unit 3” is any different from 1 or 2.
You’re adding layers of friction and reducing accessibility to information. People won’t research every oddball title they see and thus get stuck in content/ranking bubbles.
The title of the press release is targeting people with a lot of context. This industry has very long cycles and thus not a lot of people will have all the context.
If you haven't had a chance, you should take a look at some of the decade's or so worth of Title Thought that's gone into the way it works now - dang's link is a good jumping off point. The results are surely imperfect but if you want to promote change, it helps to have some familiarity with the system you want change.
These are press releases. They will be sterile. Compare that with someone linking to their personal website where they can choose to add any title of their choosing. I'd humbly suggest that those two categories being treated the same on HN isn't right given how the latter may or may not be an originating story.
I respect the work you guys put in to offer such a service to the community and for the patience in putting up with a nobody who's challenging your historical decisions in the comments :) I hope i don't come across as rude by saying that the experience for niche topics might be a little better if the headlines are made accessible without adding opinion.
Other than that, i respect your work and will not editorialize the titles anymore.
There are a lot of other mechanisms that deal with this stuff though. One is that press releases tend to be disfavoured in general - that takes care of press releases being boring.
The 'you can write your own blog post with your own spin and title' thing - you totally can, and the level playing field then is competing with all other submissions. If the commentary is interesting enough, it will end up on the front page. If it's just content recycling, someone will notice and the URL and title will be replaced with the original by the 'use original sources' rule.
If you follow dang's comments (essentially the public moderation log) you'll see most of these in action pretty quickly, at the price of having to trudge through a bunch of generic dang scoldings about other, more boring things.