Was the title automatically editorialized? The article clearly says it's "The" man who coined the word "Robot"
This is one of the more bizarre auto-editing of titles it does because of how pointless it feels.
"The man who" is established English convention. "A man who" is changing the meaning for the sake of it without producing a clearer title. The person is unambiguously defined, so the definitive article is entirely correct. If the person isn't one of a set of people to whom the description could apply, it makes no sense to use the indefinite article. If a title was, "The man who starts every day with steak and chips" then switching to, "A man who starts every day with steak and chips" feels correct, he almost surely is not alone in doing so.
In contrast, "A man who coined the word Robot", is not correct, it alters the meaning to suggest that someone else could also have coined the word.
HN also removes "How" from the start of titles which often destroys meaning too. That is explained as trying to "reduce clickbait" titles, but the effect is often to make the title nonsensical.
It's one of the many contradictions about this place.
I feels as if whoever set up this system hasn't truly understood the meaning that "The man who" conveys, and has attempted to force a version they see as "more correct" despite it producing nonsense.
Fits with the 'robot' theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnyYTjjhJ0 (Dresden Dolls singer is Amanda Palmer - A Man, Da)
полека, лампата!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39066795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082552
So it only changes "the man" to "a man"? (And I'm guessing also "the woman" to "a woman"?)
I'm struggling to understand the reasoning here. Can someone give me an example of a title starting with "the man" which sounds excessively clickbaity, but "a man" fixes it? I can't think of one.
Now I'm wondering what other auto-editing rules HN applies. Is there a list somewhere?
> Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
> Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
> The Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
> A Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
My experience is that, if a moderator hasn't touched it, the title of a story remains editable throughout the edit window of the first two hours. It doesn't matter what automatic changes were applied to the title on submission; they are not reapplied when you edit.
I restore the original title if HN's software changes it poorly. When I look at /newest or even the front page, it seems few submitters do. Either they are unaware of the possibility, or they think it isn't allowed. (AFAICT, it is allowed as long as you don't use it to break the guidelines. Here is a recent comment by dang saying you can do it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38993985.)
Over time those features of clickbait have become defocused. Removing The and How handling might make sense now.
> he’s the guy who (along with his brother Josef) invented the word “robot.”
Just to be superly, unnecessarily pedantic: in this case the person is one of a set of people, so although I don't agree with the title being rewritten, it does actually make sense.
Someone should take a page from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and create an AutoGPT "replicant" version of HN, including LLM versions of the moderators, PG, and the top commenters and submitters.