The submitted title might very well have been "This code smells of desperation.". HN has some strange rules that edit submitted titles like stripping "10" or "How to"
It was already annoying that titles can be changed by a moderator without leaving any trace and now titles are also being mutilated automatically at submission time into something that may or may not make sense. At least in this case the submitter may notice what happened and change it back.
That has certainly made finding something in my history difficult more than a few times.
Well for what it’s worth this certainly isn’t new
Recency is relative.
They would seem less strange if you saw a list of the baity titles that get de-baited that way. Maybe we should publish that.
"How to" doesn't get edited out. Certain other leading hows do.
I feel like it’d definitely help to know what the rules are. Might make it better to editorialize slightly and avoid having it happen automatically