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Comment by svnpenn | Hacker News Reader

clickbait. Actual title is:

> How Tucson, Arizona is facing up to a megadrought

Yes, we've changed it now. Submitted title was "The worst drought in 1,200 years". Assuming the BBC didn't change their own headline (which does happen), that submission broke the HN guidelines, which ask:

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

BBC often has a clickbait headline on their main page that differs from the actual article title when you click though. So if you post it to HN copying the title and link from the front page it's easy to make this mistake. I checked and it looks like that's what happened here, rather than intentional editorializing by the poster.

Thanks for figuring that out. In that case I'm glad I remembered to add the caveat!

I don't think it's clickbait... when I think of clickbait I typically think of something that is either (1) exaggerated or misleading in order to induce a click (e.g. "Tucson dying of thirst!"), or (2) uses tricky, withholding language to induce a click (e.g. "Tucson drew water from Colorado River, you won't BELIEVE what happened next!").

In this case, it's an accurate description of the phenomenon discussed directly in the article.

Knowing they are talking about a drought in a desert makes the title sound like clickbait to me.

Drought means drier than normal conditions, where "normal" varies. It is always relative; a drought in a desert can be just as serious a problem as in any other environment.

The definition of "desert" only refers to precipitation amounts, not aridity. Water is still available via lakes, reservoirs, rivers, springs, groundwater, etc.

> The definition of "desert" only refers to precipitation amounts, not aridity. Water is still available via lakes, reservoirs, rivers, springs, groundwater, etc.

Water was still available via lakes, reservoirs, rivers, springs, groundwater, etc.

notice how the original article title, and both your titles, used the name of the city. Now notice that the editorialized title omitted the city name. If you want to know what city, you have to click into the article. Thats the definition of clickbait.

I guess we just disagree on the definition of clickbait. I understand your definition and I see the logic, but with your definition I would say you can't claim clickbait is inherently "bad". If you use my definition, I think you can. shrug Good luck out there. :)

Did you even read the article? This is 100% clickbait, the article has NOTHING to do with the clickbait title, it's all about how they conserve water.

This title is a perfect example of clickbait: Make you click on something, then talk about something else.

They are talking about how Tucson is dealing with the worst drought in 1200 years, aren't they? What am I missing?

EDIT: someone updated the title, it used to read "The worst drought in 1200 years" - so this whole tangent about clickbait is even more pointless than it was when it started, sorry everyone!

> is dealing with the worst drought in 1200 years, aren't they?

No, that's not what they are talking about. That's mentioned in a single line as a throwaway.

> What am I missing?

They are talking about water conservation that's been ongoing for years, and is not related to any drought.

Let's have a go at clickbait patterns: "This US city drew water from the Colorado, what happened next will surprise you!" "Mayors of cities that do not suffer from drought never do these five things!" "Could the killer asteroid just discovered by NASA solve this city's drought? the answer is in its ice!" "Doctors agree that babies in Tucson will die if they do not get enough of this precious (but everyday) treasure" ...to be continued...

Now this would be a great use of AI: turn clickbait titles into more adequate ones.

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