Hacker News Reader

Comment by wging | Hacker News Reader

Interesting... this got re-titled, but I'm not sure why. The original title was taken from the title of the linked post: "No, I Don't Want To Configure Your App!".

(ed: I'm more intrigued than anything. It's a good re-titling IMO--I'm not sure who did it or why, but it's something I might've chosen if I didn't think choosing anything other than the post title was frowned upon. hope this doesn't distract from the actual post).

View on HN

I don't like the re-titling -- I saw the original title and understood what the article was about (advice to application developers). The new title sounds more like advice to application users. :/

That's odd because it's the opposite of the stated policy. I came to say that the original title and article, in my opinion, had a much different meaning and intent.

    Original Title:    No, I Don't Want To Configure Your App!
    Hacker News Title: Don't Configure Applications

The guidelines say:

  Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like 
  using uppercase or exclamation points

and:

  Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is 
  misleading or linkbait.

I think the idea behind this change in title is because the original is perceived as being linkbait; it has an explanation point, is very opinionated. The kind of thing that really tempts you to click through, or come and post a scathing rebuttal, because of how strongly worded it is.

Not saying I necessarily agree with the new title, but it is milder, and I think that in general moving away from clickbait titles is a good thing. There's enough clickbait junk going around the rest of the internet, having at least some standards at HN is fine.

Possibly. I see enough linkbait titles on the front page that I assumed they were preferred over sane re-titlings.

So remove the exclamation point or something. A misleading title is worse than clickbait.

And honestly, I find such a bold statement as "Don't Configure" to be more click-baity than the original title.

But the new title doesn't have the same meaning. The original title means "Don't Make Users Configure Your Application", not "Don't Configure Applications". The latter is a much more unusual statement, to the extent it made me click. I would not have clicked on the original title, nor any accurate restatement. So what's "clickbait"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com