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Comment by jffry | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's as simple as having a changelog on titles. If a mod changes the link or title, you could show something to indicate that on the frontpage, and on the comments page show more details like what the original link/title was, and what it was changed to, and by whom.

IOW it seems like transparency in moderation is what you really need. This would also solve the problem of original discussion referencing the old article no longer making sense when the article changes.

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Dang is really transparent about his modifications. I always see him posting a comment on many threads about title changes, and voting ring detections etc. He's a great moderator who does a tremendous job.

Wholeheartedly agree. But it'd be good if the surfacing of title/url moderation were automatic rather than reliant upon the mod's (current) good behavior.

A comment at the bottom of a 180+ comment thread is not sufficient. I'm always annoyed when I get to a comment thread that is talking about a different article than the one I clicked on. There needs to at least be an indication in the UI that this happened.

Usually dang post a comment when he changes the title or url. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adand+changed#!/comment/so... Most of the times the change is sensible.

It's still a problem because some of the comments refer to the old version.

"usually posts a comment" is not sufficient. Dang is human and humans make mistakes. If the system allows somebody to have that kind of power, it should also make it transparent so that we can call them out when it is being abused.

I agree with the parent, if we as a community are going to allow this type of stuff, there needs to be a changelog. We can't rely on good graces of the moderator. It will be abused.

HN has never, ever been more transparent than it is today. "The system" has always allowed people to have that kind of power; the difference today is that 'dang goes out of his way to point out when he's using it.

"We as a community" have "allowed this type of stuff" since its inception.

Just because a situation isn't as bad as it once was doesn't mean that it's somehow "good" now, though.

Perhaps we disagree, but I think the transparency has measurably improved HN over the course of more transparency.

What bad things happen if there isn't a changelog? Somebody changes the URLs on you without a log? So what? What's the harm here? As far as I can tell, the only people that have a reason to get angry are those that post suboptimal links. Usually it's a link to a rather crappy article.

Simple fix: a "moderator comment" which simply sits at the top of the thread and is required when changing the URL or title.

> This would also solve the problem of original discussion referencing the old article no longer making sense when the article changes.

This isn't really a problem. It doesn't matter.

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