Hacker News Reader

Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

As the person who submitted this story, I have a question: why was Sarah Kliff’s name removed from the headline?

I submitted it with the same title it carries at CJR, which includes her name. The story is a profile of her and her work, so removing it makes the headline less informative, not more. And she’s not a celebrity, so mentioning her by name doesn’t make the headline any more clickbaity than it would be without it.

Is there some reason HN believes she deserves to have her name struck out of the title of her own profile?

View on HN

We often remove names from titles, because HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

But it's an interview with a specific person, focused entirely on her work. The entire content of the article is tied to who she is and what she does. Removing her name from the headline just obliterates the value of the headline as a way to determine what you're going to see when you land on the other side of the link.

This is a misguided policy and I hope you reconsider it.

Just want to note that I'm on the other side of this -- I think this is a great moderation policy for this specific forum.

Including names seems like a good way to:

- let people exercise their people-related biases

- encourage gaming of the system by appealing to authority

- encourage gossip-y headlines "X's techchruch interview whatever whatever"

> Removing her name from the headline just obliterates the value of the headline as a way to determine what you're going to see when you land on the other side of the link.

I'm not sure I agree with this at all... What she did is what's valuable right? When I clicked that headline, I expect to see something or some process that is actually bringing transparency to ER prices.

Also at the end of the day HN isn't a democracy :), but I think I happen to fall in the majority here (or at least in line with what was decided).

You forgot to remove the name from this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18295942 ... or is Tesla not a name?

It's obviously not a personal name in this context. Nor is any moderation practice absolute. Please don't post frivolous nitpicks.

So if you talk about what a person does, you can't say their name, but if you talk about what a company does, you can? ok, got it. And if it's a known person, you can also say their name. How many exceptions to this "rule"?

ie: "Google paid Andy Rubin $90M while keeping silent about a misconduct claim"

A frivolous rule for lack of a better term...

Same thing happened to me, where the title was changed from "Java Creator James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle" to "Why I Quit Oracle".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15163932

It doesn't make sense.

Your example (taken with this one) actually makes it make more sense though -- seems like they remove names from articles.

I don't know why the mods have chosen to do that (I'm not going to speculate because there could be lots of reasons), but at the very least they're doing it consistently.

well, it's a very different thing if the title is "Why I quit Oracle" or "Java Creator: Why I quit Oracle" and when it's all about removing name the consequence would have been a meaningless "Why I quit".

I find HN borderline propaganda.

Its the only educated place on the internet, but the front page and comments is what HN whales decide.

I would save the word propaganda for what it's meant to mean, and not for dissatisfaction in the bias of a platform.

You're not giving the community enough credit. We moderate the site, but we certainly don't determine it—and if we do something the community doesn't like, they are anything but shy in letting us know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com