←back to thread

The man who killed Google Search?

(www.wheresyoured.at)
1884 points elorant | 4 comments | 23 Apr 24 16:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.751s | source
Show context
dang ◴[23 Apr 24 18:29 UTC] No.40135403[source]▶
Anybody have a better title? 'Better' here means (1) less baity; (2) more accurate and neutral; and (3) preferably a representative phrase from the article itself.

"The man who killed Google Search" is too baity. See the 'unless' in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"

Edit (since there are objections): I'm not taking a position for or against the article; I haven't read it. This is just bog-standard HN moderation regarding titles. I skimmed the article looking for a representative phrase and couldn't find one on first pass. That is rather unusual and when it happens I sometimes ask the community for help.

Edit 2: since there's no consensus on this I'm just going to reify that fact via the trailing-question-mark trick and call it a day.

replies(9): >>40135446 #>>40135562 #>>40135640 #>>40136157 #>>40136565 #>>40137747 #>>40137760 #>>40139868 #>>40141944 #
1. Jasper_ ◴[23 Apr 24 21:49 UTC] No.40137747[source]▶
> I'm not taking a position for or against the article; I haven't read it.

If you haven't read it, why are you in a position to suggest whether the title is accurate to the article's contents or not?

replies(2): >>40137779 #>>40138007 #
2. davidgerard ◴[23 Apr 24 21:52 UTC] No.40137779[source]▶
This implies that posting a multi-paragraph comment on an article without bothering to read it, as dang did here, is the standard that HN should aspire to going forward.
replies(1): >>40138033 #
3. dang ◴[23 Apr 24 22:15 UTC] No.40138007[source]▶
I didn't read it, I skimmed it. In this context, "read" means "read it enough to form my own view of the story"; "skim" means "read it enough for moderation purposes", such as title editing.

Moderation relies on the fact that those two are not the same. It is impossible to read all the articles; it is possible to skim enough of them to make moderation feasible.

(I did end up reading the OP out of curiosity later. My own view of the story is that I am pretty persuaded by it, but I don't like the personal attack aspect, which shows up as a mob dynamic in the comments here.)

4. dang ◴[23 Apr 24 22:18 UTC] No.40138033[source]▶
I didn't post about the article. I posted about how to moderate the title on HN, which is my job, and which does not require reading every article*, though it does require skimming some of them.

* Moderation would be impossible if it did.