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Comment by fwdpropaganda | Hacker News Reader

At some point we have to start demanding the whole information in the headline.

Example, wouldn't this be a better headline for this specific article:

Things more likely to kill you in 70s UK than today: Winter, Workplace, Infancy, Roads, Drowning, Heart Disease, Smog, and Lung Cancer.

Then you decide whether you'll click through. My guess is it would no longer make it to the front page.

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No that wouldn't be a better headline. Doing that to everything sounds awful. Decent articles are much more valuable than tweet sized factoids, if you reduce them to facts without context you end up in a really bad place. Statements of fact with no supporting work are powerfully scary.

> Statements of fact with no supporting work are powerfully scary.

You're arguing against a strawman. The post you're replying to didn't say anything about removing the supporting work.

The implication is that a more thorough headline will tell you everything you need to know without having to read the article.

Incidentally, I don't think posting to point out logical fallacies is all that useful. Feels great, adds nothing.

Did I say "to everything"? Or did I say to list articles?

Neither ... but this isn't a list article in the bad sense, either. I doubt many throwaway lists get on the front page.

You're implying that you said for list articles specifically, but in no way did you say that in the comment that's being replied to.

Even that's not enough information. I want to see a headline that contains the entire article, so I can read the headline and learn everything I need to know from the article, so I never have to click anything ever.

I think it's time for 3000 word headlines to come into fashion.

I like what you're saying, but now generally scan through the comments first to see if the original article is worth reading. Is this meta reading? It is all about the meta ...

Is all about the click rate mate. Sensational titles = ad revenue. They purposely shorten it to make you more interested.

it really isn't given it is the BBC

the content is aimed at a UK audience, and there's no ads if you're in the UK

I understand that, that's why I'm saying that for list-type articles, HN should make it a rule that you have to put everything on the headline.

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