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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

The HN guidelines call for changing titles when the original is misleading or clickbait: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

In this case the original title is arguably both, but on the other hand (1) it's literally a description of the content, which is fascinating; and (2) the 'd' in 'Rodgers' is a decisive if subtle cue to the difference.

It's a borderline call, but I think in this case the title is tasteful and crafted enough to not be garden-variety clickbait and we should keep it.

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From my European perspective I immediately assumed it was about this Mr. Rodgers, and I had to search to find the other Mr. Rogers alluded to.

Personally I'd consider it wordplay. I certainly didn't take offense at the title or feel misled, and it seems to me that the person I responded to didn't either. Maybe we should take everything so seriously?

Never underestimate the power of the dreaded title fever... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I didn't mean to imply that you were infected by it! I just knew we would have a breakout somewhere.

There's also the "'s" at the end as well - Mr. Fred had his show named "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", not "Rodgers's".

Agree. I was only misled for microsecond. For me the title is whimsical, not deliberate clickbait.

I've never heard the elitist basis of the HN title policy expressed so plainly. So it's not to preserve the sanity of neurodivergent readers, or stop them from getting annoyed with tricksy titles that have to be decoded, or to maintain a serious tone, but actually (and merely) to establish HN as somehow above the throng.

Elitism. Snobbery. Ugh.

Not sure how you got from what I wrote to any of that!

Nothing bugged me about dang's comment. His choice of words is more formal than the average web comment, so maybe that rubs some people the wrong way?

What specifically could HN do differently to be less snobby?

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