
Betteridge's Law of Headlines - pg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines
======
noibl
For a laugh, I've made a userscript[1] that highlights (lowlights really) HN
headlines that conform to this law.

The result looks like this: <http://testing321.netau.net/betteridge-
sample.png>

Improvements welcome, especially if instructive. :)

[1] <https://gist.github.com/2908570/>

[Chrome: drag 'raw' link to omnibox to install]

[Based on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934937>]

~~~
shabda
Will this userscript stop people from posting linkbait articles?

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DanielBMarkham
Sounds like a great title for a new blog entry. Does Betteridge's Law apply
all of the time?

Obviously this is true about factual reporting -- the _real_ law seems to be
making a judgment on the supportability of the facts, which is only important
when you are doing factual reporting. If you are doing analysis, many times
the entire purpose is to answer some tough question, so having a head with a
question mark makes sense.

Also note that if you couldn't answer the question with a "no" then there
wouldn't be much point in doing the analysis in the first place. Many times
the nature of these stories are such that you could call it either way, and
what the editor wants is for you to go research it and make the best guess you
can. That's a fair type of analysis article Note the I believe analysis and
commentary articles should be clearly-marked and set aside from normal
reporting.

What I see a lot of -- in major media outlets -- is analysis pieces
masquerading as news stories. From bloggers I see a lot of half-baked opinion
pieces with question mark heads where the blogger basically just throws a
couple of facts out and waves his hands around some, hoping to stir up a
fight. It's true that question marks in headlines are a warning sign, but it's
a heuristic, not a law.

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dfc
_"The maxim trends towards being universally true"_

I realize it is a little pedantic but I think it is reasonable when an
encyclopedia article contains a line like that. After three or four minutes on
the terrible NYT and Washington Post advanced article search I found the
following:

Who Will Be Next to Call Nuclear Energy Indispensable?
[http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/who-will-
be-n...](http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/who-will-be-next-to-
call-nuclear-energy-indispensable/?scp=6&sq=&st=nyt)

Who Made Those Fingerprints? [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/who-
made-those-fi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/who-made-those-
fingerprints.html?_r=1&scp=10&sq=&st=nyt)

When Should Juvenile Offenders Receive Life Sentences?
[http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/when-should-
juv...](http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/when-should-juvenile-
offenders-receive-life-sentences/?scp=1&sq=&st=nyt)

Who Should Teach Our Children?
[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-
should-t...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/who-should-teach-
our-children/?scp=15&sq=&st=nyt)

What is IPv6 and Why Does It Matter?
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-is-
ip...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/what-is-ipv6-and-why-
does-it-matter/2012/06/06/gJQAbClTIV_story.html)

In light of a comment about NYT / Washington Post being off topic to HN and or
scoped to assertions only:

Is It Worth It Being Wise? <http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html>

Could VC Be a Casualty of the Recession?
<http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html>

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georgiabiker2
He should have said any headline that is a yes or no question.

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dools
That wouldn't have been as good a headline.

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gjm11
The usual phrasing of the law is nice and snappy, but I think one of the
examples in the Wikipedia article -- "Can the middle class be saved?" --
demonstrates that the right formulation is something like this: If a headline
is in the form of a question, the right answer is almost certainly whatever
answer is least surprising. If you see a headline along the lines of "Did we
really evolve from apes?", "Does the earth still go round the sun?", "Can
humanity survive?", etc., it probably means that some crackpottish idea has
come up that would make the answer "no", and that the headline writer knows
that actually endorsing it would be a step too far.

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simcop2387
My favorite joke about this adage is that the following headline goes with it
perfectly.

A news editor prints a story about the adage, with the headline: Betteridge's
Law of Headlines, is it true?

~~~
dfc
That reminds me of a similar story about double positives that I can never
remember the details of. Fortunately wikipedia came to the rescue:

 _"During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the
claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning,
there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which
Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah."_ [1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser>

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palewire
Stay up to date on this pressing issue by following my pet robot,
@questionheds. <https://twitter.com/#!/questionheds>

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jiggy2011
This is especially true of British tabloids, in particular the Daily Mail.

I often find it interesting to read the headline and then the final paragraph
of the article text.

For example headline: "X causes Y" Final paragraph: "No links were found
between X and Y"

~~~
dfc
As an American I was wondering about non EN-US language headlines. Can anyone
comment on non-english language publications?

~~~
perlgeek
I can't remember seeing any headlines phrased as questions in any credible
German news paper (there's one on 'Sun' level named 'Bild' which I refuse to
read, so no comment on that).

There are also some weekly news papers which sometimes contain longer opinion
pieces; those might have question marks in their headlines, but usually they
aren't too sensationalist.

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1123581321
It would be interesting to analyze a large body of headlines to see whether
exist many pairings of similarly worded headlines with and without question
marks.

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Sambdala
It seems most fear-mongering in the media is phrased this way.

"Coming up at 11. Are children being killed by breastfeeding?!"

~~~
cheatercheater
upvote for humour.

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JadeNB
Obligatory Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2075).

