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Comment by jeffbee

8 months ago

Amazing that with H.N.'s doctrinaire application of the exact original title rule, this is the title that the mods chose to editorialize.

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jeffbee

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dang  8 months ago

HN has no "doctrinaire" rule about exact original titles. The rule is this: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note that word "unless". Since the original title was linkbaity, I replaced it in accordance with the rule.

That's not editorializing, because it's using the article's own language and is a more accurate and neutral description of the article. Editorializing is when a submitter takes advantage of the title field to convey their own view of an article.

thunkingdeep  8 months ago

Remember: every comment on here is implicitly directed to dang, and every link is implicitly approved of by dang.

This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and submissions to his liking.

A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way overbearing and biased, but I don’t think it really had the same power-steering effect on the shapes of discussions as it does today. Over time, this is where we’ve come to.

  • dang  8 months ago

    Oh you guys. If HN were to my liking, I promise you it would be an entirely different place.

    Suppressing my own like/dislike responses is where most of my energy goes when doing this job.

    • slater  8 months ago

      dang, we should maybe set aside ONE day where you're allowed to just let loose and blast us all with zero suppression on your end. April 1st ...? :D /s

  • Der_Einzige  8 months ago

    Thank you for proving that other HN members can call out bad HN policies and the way its applied by its de-facto leader. N-gate died far too soon.