Ask HN: Why does HN remove the word “Why” from the start of a title?

13 points·farazzz··7 comments

Try it: make a post with a title like “Why I [rest of title]” - the title will be automatically converted to “I [rest of title]”, but you can add it back in an edit.

It also only seems to do it when “Why” is followed by “I”.

Is the reasoning behind this documented anywhere? Possibly to prevent click bait?

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It's not documented, but most features here are not documented. The most similar part of the guidelines is: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.

> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

For an official reply you can contact the mods hn@ycombinator.com

My guess is that most articles with a title like "I ate a banana every day" are not just an assertion, but they have some kind of justification and are equivalent to "Why I ate a banana every day", and HN prefer the minimalist version.

Interesting.

I wonder why they don’t like the ones with numbers. Maybe those types of articles tend to be click bait?

Still guessing … I think that the title of most listicles start with a number, like "42 arbitrary chosen food to eat on Tuesday!!!"

(HN used to filter the "!" too. Probably the filter is still there.)

It's a known click bait tactic, so I'm guessing probably yes.

What about this title:

Why I? Analysis of the 9th letter of the alphabet.

"Why I - How people from Newcastle greet each other, written phonetically."

Y eye man

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