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Comment by michaelhoffman | Hacker News Reader

> Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines

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Is there a law about people always quoting a law from wikipedia?.. Betteridge, Poe, Godwin, Dunning-Kruger.. it is getting just as old as the terrible blog post titles that provoke them them.

This is not really even such a ridiculous proposition, either- certainly worthy of discussion.

Not that I've heard. But there should be...

Cantelon's Law: if you put someone's name in front of an adage people will feel savvy when they quote it.

You shall create a wikipedia page for that, that way we can refer to it :)

Much better that we all recite this message board trope than talk about golang. After all, there might be 1 or 2 people left in the world who haven't already heard it.

And there might be 1 or 2 people left on Hacker News who haven't already heard of Go.

And that's why the link goes to an article discussing usage of Go instead of the golang homepage.

Law applied to some recent HN headlines:

How Much Is a Fun Job Worth? No.

Ask HN: Why is wikidot.com blacklisted? No.

Ask HN: What is your ideal income? No.

Which educational technologies are worth betting on? No.

Ask PG: What Is The Most Frighteningly Ambitious Idea You Have Been Pitched On? No.

Those answers are pretty close.

>How Much Is a Fun Job Worth? No.

That recalls an old prolog joke:

Q: "How many prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?"

A: "Yes."

Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines Correct?

I've found that law rather accurate for news headlines, but rather less so for blog posts or scientific papers.

There is no answer in this article, but the evidence given says "maybe".

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