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Comment by caminante

9 hours ago

Per HN policy, stop editorializing the headlines.

Here's the actual headline:

> Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story

    echo -en 'Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story' | wc -c
    107

HN also forces editorializing to less than 81 characters. I too sometimes struggle to editorialize the title to something that fits and ideally does not lose context.

  • Fair point.

    I'd trim the bit about Polymarket to get under the cap.

    > Gamblers [...] are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story

    You'll lose a little topical/karma sizzle (with no "Polymarket" keyword), but it's higher fidelity.

    • > I'd trim the bit about Polymarket to

      Heck no, that's removing the important part of the news! Specifically, that a new kind of unregulated anonymous bet-making is leading to new kind of violence against journalists.

      In contrast, the piece isn't really about Iran, or about Missiles, although those underscore the gravity or perversion of what's going on.

      _____________

      Such a cut isn't necessary either, compare the original versus this 79-character version:

          Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story
          Gamblers                     on Polymarket     vow    to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story
      

      The assumption that Gamblers care about winning a bet should be obvious and implicit, so that's an obvious thing to omit. The ongoing nature of the vowing is also unnecessary when simply having past cases is bad enough.

      1 reply →

That original headline is longer than what HN accepts. What editorialized message are you accusing the shorter "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story" of inserting?