
Techmeme is now writing its own headlines - dbin78
http://news.techmeme.com/130906/headlines
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minimaxir
_" You're changing the words that publishers use, and that's wrong." It's
adding to the words publishers use, and it's long been an accepted practice on
aggregation sites like Drudge Report, Arts & Letters Daily, and many more._

It should be noted that this appears to be the opposite philosophy of Hacker
News's headline rewrites, which focus more on minimalism and succinctness, for
better or for worse.

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ulisesrmzroche
For worse, since we complain about it endlessly. Headlines should do their job
quietly, not cause this uproar.

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otikik
For a moment there I thought they were saying that _the site itself_ wrote its
own headlines. You know, with artificial intelligence etc. _That_ would have
peaked my interest.

Alas, no. They use people.

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gojomo
The nut of why they're doing it (and relevant to sites like HN as well):

 _[C]licking on stories merely to discover what they 're about is a
frustrating chore. Unlike most other news sites, we'd rather save our readers
clicks than force them through a maze of pages to catch up on news. Techmeme
therefore values headlines rich on specifics: headlines with names, numbers,
and active verbs. Headlines that function as abstracts.

Unfortunately for us, publishers understandably write headlines suiting their
own needs, and not necessarily ours. The reasons for this are numerous, and
varied:

[…useful list of original-headline problems elided…]

As a result, Techmeme is often forced either to post a story with a nebulous
headline, wait for a publication that rewrites the news with a clear headline
(leading many publishers to wonder why) or pass on stories altogether. Since
all of these choices are far from ideal, we've now resolved to produce
Techmeme-optimized titles "in-house"._

I'd love to see an HN/Reddit-like site that, just as it has a never-ending
tournament for story ranking, has a mini-tournament on each story for the most
informative headline.

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devindotcom
Why stop at a headline? Why not a /.-like summary or quote that represents the
article? Headlines are made for enticing clicks, not informing the reader.

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ulisesrmzroche
The headlines purpose is to inform the reader so they will be enticed to read
more. If it doesn't do this, it's a badly written headline, it doesn't need to
be patched, but re-written right.

~~~
gojomo
Enticement is a goal of providers with certain models. Readers want an
accurate indication of whether the target contains new and useful information.
These goals can often conflict. Techmeme is more aligned with the readers,
here.

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iamshs
One annoying thing about Techmeme is the linked tweets, they are just snarky
comments from famed critics on twitter. Majority of the time, they do not add
any value but a tongue in cheek remark. I would like them to be more selective
in linking tweets, and adding insightful tweets.

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user2
YC Hacker News is an aggregator based on voting. Techmeme is an aggregator
based on human editing.

The new change should not be surprising.

