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Comment by scottjad | Hacker News Reader

What's with this stupid title where you have to read the thing to have any clue what it is about?

Imagine if the front page were full with these kind of titles. We might as well change the titles to random numbers.

The last post by this guy that I remember, and the second to last one to do well on the frontpage (perhaps explaining the current behavior), was titled "Off". Can you get any more vague?

In that post all he said about anything being off was "The presenting executives seemed a bit off, too."

My prediction is that before long he'll have a post at the top of Hacker News titled "And" where he ends it with "And that's what I think."

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Why does it matter? He's writing this stuff for his blog, not for Hacker News. Anyone who reads his blog is going to read this article no matter what it's titled. The only problem here is Hacker News's insistence on using the original title even when it does provide enough context.

I would vote for letting users of HN put a custom title, so they can spin off an axis of study.

You can put a custom title, it's just that HN's all-knowing, anonymous moderators will almost invariably revert it to match whatever's on the page.

I'm OK with moderator's reverting it, as long as that is communicated through the UX that it was reverted and the original title is still accessible.

They did that on the "I'm not famous but dying of cancer at 35" post.

You sometimes have to edit the title just to make it fit in 80 characters.

When I submit, I sometimes use the subtitle instead of the main title, or submit something like (in this case): "Worse: Business models and lock-in among Internet giants" which won't get reverted until it's already on the front page with a reasonable number of votes.

Congratulations, his new post is titled And: http://www.marco.org/2014/03/16/and

I like the guy and his essays, but the titles appear to be a pseudointellectual attempt to be profound.

UPDATE: Then again, judging from the comments here, maybe he was guessing (correctly) the point that nobody was going to address.

According to my HN commenter bingo card, what this top-level thread needs next is either complaining about TFA's background colour, or a heated debate about the actual definition of ad-hominem.

>> "What's with this stupid title where you have to read the thing to have any clue what it is about?"

I think you've answered your own question. A lot of people will think it's a stupid title but be curious enough to click through.

Or perhaps he chose a title appropriate for traditional blog/RSS reader format where readers are presented with the first paragraphs of the article, and the title is little more than decoration.

The article author can hardly be blamed for the HN policy of using article titles even when they aren't descriptive.

I clicked through because at the time (will change depending on when someone reads my comment) it had 104 points, 55 comments and was the top link.

But I guess more importantly (and this is a lesson) the title was ambiguous enough to not let me know that I wouldn't be interested in it.

So for example if it said "Ruby" I would have been less likely to click because that's not of any interest to me.

So my curiosity was piqued by the title. That and definitely the karma made me take a look. And the fact that I couldn't rule out interest.

This also ties into the concept of "don't oversell".

One of the things I learned as a kid was to stop selling once you have made a sale. Because if you said more after making the sale (and in some cases before) you could lose the sale.

Salesman: "and the warranty on the refrigerator is fairly price as well" Buyer: "oh wait I need a warranty hadn't thought of that, cancel the order then".

>My prediction is that before long he'll have a post at the top of Hacker News titled "And" where he ends it with "And that's what I think."

I would laugh so hard at that.

http://www.marco.org/2014/03/16/and

Perhaps it's a good thing that you have to read his whole piece to know what he's saying.

No it's not. I regret wasting my time reading this article. If it had a better title, I wouldn't have bothered.

Who cares? I doubt he worries what HN commenters will think of his titles when he chooses them. It's a non-issue.

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