I agree with you dang, but the title is a bit vague. A random war reporter quitting isn't interesting. I clicked on the link to scan over it, and was surprised to see it was CJ Chivers, and ended up reading the entire article.
Maybe a better title would be "Why War Reporter CJ Chivers Had to Suddenly Stop"
but I suppose the name doesn't add anything if you don't think people will recognize his name.
Ok, we'll use your title. Thanks! I'd push back a bit here though:
> A random war reporter quitting isn't interesting.
An article about an unknown reporter might well be more interesting (in HN's sense) than an article about a famous one. That is a function of the article, not the fame of its subject.
Thanks for pushing back on that point. I realized that part was a mistake a couple hours after posting it. HN would be a lot less interesting if we only had articles from famous people/companies/etc.
(BTW, I appreciate the transparency and openness your posts bring to HN. I know that can't always be easy, but you're doing an awesome job.)
Accurate, neutral titles are what's best for readers to make up their own minds. Someone has to make the call about what an accurate, neutral title is, though—otherwise there would be a deadlock.
In practice, it's not all that arbitrary—not algorithmic, but not wildly subjective either. We get it wrong sometimes, but the quality of the front page is vastly higher with this practice than it would be without it.
You may also have noticed that when people complain about titles, in nearly every case we accommodate their complaints. I'm not doing that this time because the present case seems clear to me and worth defending on principle. But that's rare.
Edit: we did change the title based on this suggestion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10235921. It's really helpful when users suggest better titles! I wish it happened more often.
As always thanks for a thoughtful reply. I'll reiterate somethings I've mentioned to you before:
> Accurate, neutral titles are what's best for readers to make up their own minds.
Not to be pedantic, but I think you are using the word accurate when you mean precise. Accuracy implies a consistent lens. My concern is that by striving for higher precision titles we lose a consistency that actually has less bias long term.
> In practice, it's not all that arbitrary—not algorithmic, but not wildly subjective either.
This is something that's been said over and over again to a community that is extremely focused on empirical evidence. It would be not only great to have a better understanding of how this works, it would be extremely interesting to the community.
> You may also have noticed that when people complain about titles, in nearly every case we accommodate their complaints.
I have noticed that, thank you.
> I'm not doing that this time because the present case seems clear to me and worth defending on principle. But that's rare.
Again, this is a group that responds very well to evidence based argument, and so it's kind of lame to hear that these decisions are made unilaterally based on your principles. I mentioned bias above. Systems that are based on one person making decisions based on their principles are by definition biased. Maybe this is fine, but in that case it would be nice if it was made more clear to the community.
Anyway, don't feel obligated to respond to this, it's just feedback. I understand you're doing the best you can to solve a really hard problem, and I do appreciate the work you put in. It's clear you are thoughtful and working hard, but more transparency would be greatly appreciated.
In general, sure. In this instance, this is a bad policy decision. The title of the article is substantiative. It only seems like link bait at the shallowest possible reading level.
One way to flag titles that you consider to be link bait would be to put quotation marks around them, as in "one weird trick that..."
The proliferation of quotation marks would probably give the impression of a somewhat sarcastic and superior editorial policy, but in all seriousness, software people are all about detailed quotation policies, literal references where appropriate, changelogs, version control, etc.
HN's stripped-down aesthetic is a bit Procrustean.
I didn't know said war reporter's name, but, granted, I don't usually read long war-related stories from the likes of the NYTimes or Esquire (I find them overly biased). Even so, calling him the "best war reporter in a generation" is a bit of an over-statement.
He may be very talented, but as far as I know he didn't put online anything like guys like this did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rorjogZdwM (at 2:51 you can hear bullets flying just a couple of meters above him, microphone still in hand). Granted, what these guys in Syria do is not very smart, safety wise (no helmets, no anything), but they're doing war reporting by actually risking their lives almost every day. Also, they're not "Westerners" and shout "Allah akbar", so that may have something to say about their job not being recognized as "the best in a generation".
It does make the title less catchy, of course; that's one reason we do it.