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The man who killed Google Search?

(www.wheresyoured.at)
1884 points elorant | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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dang ◴[] 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.

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taco_emoji ◴[] No.40135562[source]
"Linkbait" implies it's hyperbole, but I would argue that the headline is a perfect description of the argument being made here.
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dang ◴[] No.40135839[source]
Linkbait is about using tricks to grab attention rather than providing neutral information. Hyperbole is only one way to do that.

In this case "The man who" is a linkbait trope and "killed" is a sensational attention-grabby word. Composing them into "the man who killed" is linkbait.

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1. davidgerard ◴[] No.40138587[source]
The headline makes a promise and the article delivers on it.

At this stage, I think your reading is idiosyncratic and not an actual problem with the headline in relation to the article.

Editorialising it with a question mark that is not present in the article - which makes its case - is particularly inappropriate, as it makes it look like the article is asking a Betteridge question for a headline. This is you misrepresenting the article.