Why is the word Israeli removed from the title? and Meta added? Seems like quite a politically-important modification
replies(4):
I think some of you are overly focusing on the title instead of the overall effect of the moderator interventions here, which is that the article gets more attention and the story more coverage. In that sense, I'd think it would be in you guys' interest to take yes for an answer, much as zzzeek has here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43657317.
Rather than taking on the task of manually editing headlines to be more sympathetic to Israel perhaps the site could implement a filter that disallows the word from being used in titles or posts altogether? If that is the aim, it would save you time having to answer questions about it.
There's no contradiction. The rule is "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."
Nor is there any attempt to steer discussion away from the subject of the article. That would have been a hapless attempt, had it existed, since the thread is filled with such discussion.
> I did those title edits to (marginally) reduce the flamebait effect of the title
Your goal was to “reduce the flamebait effect” without having any impact on the discussion? Those two sentiments are contradictory.
> That would have been a hapless attempt
No argument there, it actually makes the whole endeavor of manually inventing an Israel-friendly title to substitute a neutral and factually accurate one even stranger.
The goal here appears to be to make it seem as though a campaign to remove pro-Palestinian content simply happened on its own, which only works if the title that you wrote successfully dissuades people from reading the article. It looks like all this choice accomplished, though, was raising some eyebrows where you’ve now had to post several times to defend it, with little to no impact on the quality of the discussion of the topic. That being said, the fact that it was a half measure doesn’t provide adequate cover for the obvious intent in this particular editorial choice.
So again, why even bother with the half measures? If any mention of Israel lowers any topic below the community standards for discussion, you can simply outright ban mentions of Israel and any Israel-adjacent topics rather than manually intervening to write bespoke, more positive headlines for the country to suit any mention.