What is going on with the editing of submission titles? | Hacker News Reader

What is going on with the editing of submission titles?

Twice now, I've seen my submission titles edited by someone else (probably Graham or his admins, if he has any for this site).

Both times, the edits were innocuous (the first one improved the title ever so slightly) but unnecessary.

It's not a huge problem, but it is a bit annoying.

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Editors edit submission titles for two reasons:

1. To keep the site clean (no spelling mistakes, gratuitously long titles, SHOUTING!!!, etc.)

2. To keep titles fairly neutral. People have a right to say what they want in comments, but because a story can only be submitted once, if we didn't edit submission titles, the first submitter could put whatever spin on the story, and all readers would have to read it as that.

Sounds good.

What about posting a link to the original content. Here is an example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528

From the article it is clear that the original news was broken at: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9761584-7.html?part=rss&...

I am not sure why the submitter decided to post a site that quoted the news instead of the original news source.

Links like that are regularly edited to point to the original article instead

I think we're quickly approaching a slippery slope here. Seeing as a username is attached to every post, isn't the user somewhat responsible for every link (s)he posts? It now constitutes part of their reputation. Now, if an editor modifies the post but the username is still attached to the post and their is no indication that it's been edited , is the original poster still responsible for the post? (S)he can turn around and say, "That's not what I posted. I don't want that attached to my submission history. I don't want any karma that's associated with that altered post, whether good or bad."

I sure wouldn't want to be associated with my submission anymore if the editors changed my title from "UPDATED!!!!1" to "Updated".

We may be on a slippery slope, but we're not quickly approaching one. Editors have fixed titles from day 1.

I think the best plan is just to make it policy that submission titles have a different status from comments. They have to, because all the users have to share the same title for each link.

I'm not sure I understand that explanation.

So we share the same title for each link (yes, we do), but we see different comments?

No, we don't: if there's a ridiculous/obnoxious/puerile/etc. comment posted, we all share that, too.

Why should the editing policy for titles be different from comments?

He may have meant that different users should give a specific submission the same title, one without spelling mistakes and bias. So if a user titles a submission with spelling mistakes or bias then it would be reasonable to edit the title to the correct form.

Probably the best solution is to have a "posted by" (editor name) and a "submitted by" (user name) like Slashdot. Alternatively, an "edited by" tag added to anything changed after submission.

I second that, but I think editors want to stay anonymous. Just adding an asterisk next to edited titles would be sufficient.

I rarely get involved in these sorts of discussions, and will continue by remaining neutral on this issue. However you've hit on my pet peeve - the 'slipery slope cliche' and so I cannot remain silent. All of humankind's decisions lie somewhere on a slippery slope - the nature of being a human is making these kinds of choices. What makes us all so interesting is that we continue to live and function without falling down, and we trust each other to do the same. People really need to come up with stronger arguments without falling back on the 'it's a slippery slope' cliche. Every time I hear that phrase, I just want to reply with some other brilliant argument-ender like "now you're just comparing apples to oranges" or "that sounds like something Hitler would have said."

I think that's something Stalin would say.

Neither scenario describes my original titles.

Perhaps it was just over-zealous editing, but budu3 makes an excellent point about attribution.

I post here under my real name, and I'm always careful to think through what I post.

If I get the sense that what I type here is going to be changed arbitrarily by 3rd parties, that is going to end my participation.

I understand you're trying to prevent what happened to slashdot and reddit, but there is such a thing as going too far in the other direction.

One fix might be to implement something like Facepunch Studio's forum system. You're auto-banned for a day if you don't capitalize your thread titles and banned by moderators if you shout in ALL CAPS or misspell words.

Here's their ban list: http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showbans.php?

But that's solving a problem we don't have yet? I think this particular uproar is the liveliest discussion we've had on news.yc and even this isn't terribly exciting.

Paul, Regarding your first point:

This title could use editing if any title needs editing - "Fuck Facebook Conversion: Be platform agnostic and use your own APIs. " I appreciate that the title of the blog entry is such, but then the site doesn't look clean with this title. I must also say, I think this aspect of the new changes might be a tad over zealous perhaps even anti-septic.

Regarding your second point - Titles are made to tempt people to click and most times the original blogger or author might use such a ploy.We might use the original authors title and he may be doing the spinning. How far down the line can you edit? Again the "Fuck Facebook" title is a case in point.

I urge you to reconsider the editing. Thoughts?

I don't think he meant what you think he meant by "clean".

That is pretty shady. Do you include a way to see previous version of the title?

I think it'd be nice if there were some simple page displaying what instructions the admins are operating under. They're white knights not gestapo, right? :-)

Why's it matter? They have our interests in mind. This works because we're small and Paul's visible.

I'm sure there are no specific 'instructions'. They're trying to keep the site nice because it's a reflection of YCombinator.

Doesn't need to be very formal. Just a little friendly transparency to avoid theses kinds of threads being repeated frequently.

We're wasting a lot of time, time is money! We are trying to start our own companies, and come here for meeting people and learning. This doesn't fall in either category. We don't have a lot of time in starting our companies, but I guess this is good because while you guys are being distracted by all this, I'll have read the important links and maybe make some breakthrough in my "killer app".

What were the changes?

I've had this happen to one of my submissions too. It was this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988

I didn't put the authors name in title and it was edited to reflect that.

I believe in my submission I had put the authors name at the end, and it has now been moved to the front of the title. Either that or I'm just really tired.

They were minor edits for brevity, just the removal of one or two adjectives and conjunctions.

I.e., they were the types of things that if I were writing a paper and a draft reviewer suggested removing them, I would have said "ok".

But that's not the point.

Agreed. I was just wondering out of interest.

I think its fine - anyone who things otherwise will find plenty of non editor places to hang out on the net.

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