
What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap - justhw
https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/zillow-realtor-listing-war
======
bcg1
Sold my house this summer. My wife listed the house on Zillow and took nice
looking pictures and put a good description. We also paid a real estate agent
$300 to list our house in the MLS (and we would handle the rest of the sale).
Once our listing was in the MLS Zillow brought in the crapified compressed
JPEGs from the MLS feed and overwrote our description etc, and locked us out
from further edits. Fail.

Zillow is going about this all wrong... their advantage is that they aren't
the MLS system, they are the best positioned to be an alternative to the NAR
cartel. If anything THEY should have agents in every town who will put your
house into the MLS for you for $300, as well as allow enhanced listing on
their site at the same time... they might actually make some money that way,
and also it would solve their MLS problem. Instead they seem to want to beg
the cartel for a seat at the table. Pretty sad.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You just listed all the reasons Redfin
([https://www.redfin.com](https://www.redfin.com)) is killing it. Their value
proposition is that their agents aren't paid on commission, they're paid on
your satisfaction. Their website is also very data-intensive compared to MLS
sites (which create information asymmetry between buyers, sellers, and brokers
due to how they're setup).

~~~
encoderer
Otoh, are the very best agents going to work for rf and make less money?
Redfin looks like modern KW to me. Most great agents don't want to undersell
their own industry. And while there are many markets where a mediocre agent
will do, I wouldn't take that chance in sf, la, Nyc, Miami, etc

~~~
nosuchthing
What differentiates real estate agents in terms of "skill"?

It seems like their access to information of products available for sale would
be the only useful service a from a real estate company. Of course, granted
knowledge of which houses are available, helping the buyer find something they
like is important but could this not be done with a google street view type
system?

~~~
mooreds
Here's what differentiates realtors.

    
    
       * negotiation (they negotiate tens of deals a year, as opposed to your negotiating one every few years--they should know the ins and outs of all the levers of a real estate contract)
       * property valuation/neighborhood knowledge (the school lets out and a crowd of slouching teenagers walks through here every day/this street isn't plowed by the city/etc).
       * access to inventory (some agents will have access to extra houses because of past clients)
    

The agency problem can be dealt with if you have an agent who wants your
business and knows that the LTV of a happy customer is higher than the money
he can get from putting you in a house you don't want.

The harder problem is selection--buyers/sellers tend to shop on referral or
cost because, like any other profession, laymen have a hard time judging
competency.

Source: I worked for a real estate brokerage as a software developer for a
number of years.

[edit: formatting--geez, when can we get markdown here :) ]

------
meritt
Zillow has substantially mitigated the loss of Move.com/Realtor.com by forging
direct relationships with numerous MLSs since the cutoff in April.

> Since January, more than 300 MLSs have signed agreements to send listings
> directly to Zillow and Trulia, providing their members access to the largest
> audience of home shoppers on mobile and Web 1.

[http://investors.zillowgroup.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID...](http://investors.zillowgroup.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=925723)

The sampling methods used by the author are extremely poor. Miami, FL on
Zillow.com and Realtor.com are _substantially_ different areas. Just do a
search yourself and look at the map. Realtor appears to be using the metro
while Zillow's site defaults to "Miami" only. They need to extract 100%
inventory and use exactly the same geofenced boundaries if you want actual 1:1
comparison. Their conclusion may very well be correct but the data sure as
hell does not support it.

If you want to criticize Zillow, there are far easier methods than this one.
How about that Trulia acquired MarketLeader for $355M (Apr 13), Zillow
acquired Trulia for $2.5B (Feb 15), and Zillow just sold MarketLeader for
$23M. How much of Trulia's $2.5B pricetag was in recognition of Market
Leader's "value"? I'm guessing we'll see at least $200-250M or so drop from
Zillow's goodwill ($1.8B as of 6/30/15) on their balance sheet for Q3-15.

~~~
smackfu
The problem is that if the MLS that covers your area didn't make a deal with
Zillow, the overall stats don't really matter. Zillow will be useless for
house shopping.

~~~
uxp
I bought a house in Salt Lake City in June. Zillow (and Trulia, etc.) have
piss-poor integration in this market, which left our house marked available
for weeks after our closing date. I had to chase someone away who was snooping
around my back yard 6 weeks after moving in because they thought the home was
unoccupied (we hadn't moved in because I was remodeling parts of the
basement).

They may provide a better UI than the abysmal MLS sites your agent recommends,
but they don't do much more in (as the article suggests) the +60% of markets
they don't have listing contracts with.

------
gshx
If Zillow can solve the "problem" of putting all the docs (disclosures,
inspections, offer docs, title docs later on, etc) up with the listing along
with making a network of handymen (to help out with prettifying a house for
sale), most buyers and sellers will be happy to pay them 0.5-1% instead of the
seller having to pay the agents 4-5%. There's generally not a whole lot of
work in buying or selling a house including agents doing events like open
houses and helping with "discovery" and the buyer-seller matching problem. The
offer process itself is also quite simple and can be done online. That said,
the one benefit of an open house/tour hosted by a neutral party, is that it
lets potential buyers easily assess a house without having a biased seller in
attendance. This can also be managed and does not really require a real estate
agent. Zillow and similar services like Trulia have a fantastic market
opportunity in front of them.

~~~
w4
This is all a great idea - but state laws wouldn't permit it (I work in the
industry).

Most of the features you described, and the fee structure associated with
them, would be in violation of real estate licensing laws. Hence why no one
has provided a modern, competitive alternative to real estate brokers: you
simply can't under the current regulatory regime. Otherwise, what you've
described would almost certainly already exist.

~~~
jpmattia
> _This is all a great idea - but state laws wouldn 't permit it (I work in
> the industry)._

Uber, AirBnB redux. Provide a service that people want more than one built on
cronyism-type relations between entrenched industry and gov't, and the change
happens even with the existing law base.

It's not like it's some secret as to how the laws got there in the first
place.

~~~
nsxwolf
Uber worked because you can be sneaky and give people rides without the
government knowing about it. You can't be sneaky about buying and selling
homes.

~~~
Scoundreller
But the real estate agent serves little legal function. I'm not sure if their
name will appear on any government document for a real estate transaction.

I see little difference between: A) Hiring a real estate agent to sell my
home; and B) Selling it myself while hiring:

1) a photographer to take/post my pictures 2) an answering service to answer a
throwaway phone number I create; and 3) a tour guide that does not even know
their way around

~~~
cplease
How are you going to find buyers and get the best price in most markets
without listing and offering commission split to the buyer's broker?

The second someone unlicensed starts to regularly interface with other agents,
they will get ratted out and stomped on. If you don't interface with other
agents, then you are excluding most of the market.

~~~
Scoundreller
Mostly I was trying to highlight how Uber and Airbnb take a monetary-
intermediary approach, while the entire RE industry sits out of the actual
transaction itself.

This is probably why I trust the average Airbnb host/Uber driver more than the
average RE.

As a buyer, I was never "found". Without representation, I would seek the
listing agents directly and have them give the tour. I figure the listing
agent would be very eager to earn a bonus/double commission from their selling
client, perhaps to my benefit even though I have no exclusive with them.

------
Simulacra
When I was searching for a house I used 5 or so apps to do so. I found that
Zillow had many, many listings that were very old, but were placed up top and
the dates changed to make it look like it was just listed. However, checking
the actual data for that listing shows that it was not pulled from the market
and relisted, it was just Zillow constantly boosting really crappy houses that
had been on the site for a long time.

In short, trust none of them, use multiple services, and keep looking
constnatly. I found my house through my agents MLS system, which was about the
time it showed up on the aggregates.

~~~
jpmattia
> _In short, trust none of them_

To amplify: I don't think it's any accident that the 2005 housing fiasco
happened in this industry. Terrible pricing information (gaps + timeliness),
as well as terrible conflicts of interest (buyers brokers are incentivitized
to make the buyer pay as much as possible) make me wonder how much longer
these dinosaurs are going to continue to operate the same way.

~~~
_delirium
Do you mean the 2007-08 housing crash, or something else in 2005? If the 2008
one, it had a lot more to do with the financial side than the actual real-
estate side, so changes in the real-estate sales process aren't likely to fix
that problem. The "primary" dollar value involved in housing-price declines
was significant but not really enough to cause an economy-destabilizing
financial crisis. But the primary price declines in actual real-estate were
multiplied many times over because the mortgages were all piled into heavily
leveraged securities, priced based on risk models that turned out to be very
inaccurate. That caused a crisis that ultimately involved dollar amounts
greater than the total value of all the involved real estate.

A loose analogy: if you buy stock with 100:1 leverage, and the stock price
declines 10%, you lose 1000% of your original investment. The _big_ problem
here wasn't really the 10% decline in stock values (significant but not
catastrophic), rather the fact that you had 100:1 leveraged exposure.

------
MikeKusold
When I was looking for a condo this past summer, I used RedFin. Since RedFin
ties into MSLs (basically a list that all realtors use), I knew about listing
before my agent could email me about them.

I highly recommend it, even if you have a non-RedFin agent.

~~~
ohitsdom
Zillow used to tie into MLSs but their access was cut in most areas (as
described in the article) due to a dispute. Used to be an awesome resource,
now it's a ghost town.

Would think it's only a matter of time before realtor.com shuts down similar
sites like RedFin.

~~~
sharkweek
Redfin is a brokerage and thus has full access to the MLS. I'm not sure anyone
can shut off Redfin's access so easily because of this?

~~~
llimllib
Which is also why they have very spotty coverage; if they're not a licensed
broker in your area, they have zero listings.

~~~
xenophon
To be precise on this: Redfin covers 75+ metro markets and the vast majority
of the United States by population. "Spotty" is fairly inaccurate if your
intent is to describe the % of the population that can use Redfin to find a
home.

(I work at Redfin).

~~~
thisone
I know that vast majority by population will cover a lot of where people are
buying in the US. But when you're looking at areas outside of those population
centers, then sparse could apply

Sparse coverage in sparsly populated locations.

For example, Redfin does not cover my home town, nor any of the Eastern CT
cities I put in the search box, so for my parents selling their house, or
anyone looking to buy in that area, it's not useful.

Maybe I was searching it wrong?

------
imroot
Getting and keeping real estate listings up to date is a big pain in the ass.
There's no standardized residential listing data, and while you might get RETS
feeds or data dumps from the MLS nightly, it's still on you to ensure that all
of the information is parsed correctly and displayed in accordance to the
MLS'es standards (or risk being cut off).

Often, MLSes have terms in their contract that say that regardless of the
source, that their information must be the canonical source for information in
some cities -- which is a huge problem with dealing with REO'ed (Real Estate
Owned) properties and the banks that want to sell them.

I know of a startup that eventually just resorted to scraping realtor.com (and
I'm sure that they're still doing it to this day) instead of dealing with the
various headaches of managing the contracts with the MLSes and RETS providers.

~~~
stephengillie
It's a nightmare. I used to work for one of the industry dinosaurs; they have
an MLS team that was as large as their development team. They pull data from
over 600 MLSes, with different requirements for each. Managing 600 business
contacts is a big pain, then there are different data conventions that change
without notice. They have had a long-standing arrangement to feed data to
Trulia too.

The word is most MLSes use CDNs, so scraping might not be the best way.

~~~
jsc123
which dinosaur?

~~~
stephengillie
Reliance

------
debacle
The MLS system is a disaster. Think Alien 2 levels of mucousy, dark and dank
ventilation shafts. Zillow has never not worked really well for all of my uses
(shopping, price checking, looking at neighborhoods, etc), and it's done so in
a way that no other realty website ever has.

The reality is that realtors have a huge vested interest in making it more
difficult to shop for a house and generally rely on information asymmetry in a
massive way. Zillow is a massive blow to that barrier and I hope they succeed.

Disclaimer: I've worked for a handful of realtors and with several MLS systems
in the past.

------
rgbrgb
One point that this analysis misses is that there's often a significant delay
between the time a property hits the market (lists on MLS) and the time it
hits aggregators like Zillow [0]. If you're looking at week old listings in
hot markets like LA and SF, then you're looking at a batch of inventory that
has already been picked through by savvier buyers.

For this reason, we always recommend that our buyers use a brokerage-quality
data feed like ours [1] or Redfin's to monitor for new listings. If you have a
reliable data feed and check what's new once a day, then you never miss out on
the best properties -- much less stressful than clicking and re-clicking tiny
icons on a map.

[0]: [http://www.inman.com/2014/02/14/los-angeles-claw-is-first-
ml...](http://www.inman.com/2014/02/14/los-angeles-claw-is-first-mls-in-the-
country-to-delay-listing-syndication-feeds/) [1]:
[https://www.openlistings.com/setup](https://www.openlistings.com/setup)

~~~
debacle
Truth be told, if you're looking at day old listings on the MLS you're looking
at a batch of inventory that has already been picked through by savvier
buyers.

~~~
rgbrgb
Sure, but typically offers have 3 day expirations so you'll still have a
window to go see the home and get an offer in if you like it. That said, the
advice stands even if you're checking more than once a day -- only look at the
new stuff (sort by listing date), and don't stress :).

------
jasode
FYI: To add some color to the article, here's more information about the
different relationships of MLS with Zillow and Redfin from a former Redfin
intern (posted July 28, 2014):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096912)

~~~
arenaninja
That's a very interesting read. So that means that in my market (Houston, TX),
Redfin actually has all the listings? I wasn't aware of that. har.com usually
has 100% coverage and some nifty features, but the mobile app is pretty awful

~~~
CodyReichert
In a very simplified nutshell - yes. HAR is the MLS in Houston, and Redfin is
a brokerage in Houston. That allows Redfin to sign an agreement with HAR to
access their listing data and show it publicly. HAR will have 100% of listings
from participating brokerages (non-participating brokers are a very, very
small percentage). Now, as long as Redfin follows some rules they'll have no
problem keeping up to date listings (after all, getting them directly from the
MLS is the best source you'll get).

Zillow, on the other hand, has an agreement with some MLS's, but for the most
part they rely on alternative methods of getting listing data. The only reason
that have any (IMO) is because they have consumers looking for property there
- which gives the Realtor incentive to upload/update their listings. So as
everyone else is saying, Zillow can fall out of date - whereas Redfin can
actually get penalized for being out of date.

~~~
encoderer
Actually the vast majority of their listings come from direct mls. I'm not
sure if this includes the Houston mls.

------
ohitsdom
> So as not to violate Zillow.com’s terms of service we have done so manually
> (hence the limited number of cities).

Can sites have a legally enforceable terms of service that ban automated
access? I understand if the automated traffic is high and impacts server
performance and cost, but they can ban it even if it's limited? I understand
sites need to protect their servers, but if it's publicly accessible and the
traffic is reasonable, I'm surprised it's legally enforceable to ban it. And
as shown by this blog post, it still can be done manually so the ban isn't
very effective.

~~~
tyre
Yes. Sites can ban traffic for any reason they choose. You're using their
servers and they have the right to determine how those servers are accessed.

They don't need a specific "right" to control their servers. Likewise, users
on the internet have no "right" to access anything.

~~~
paulgb
> Likewise, users on the internet have no "right" to access anything

Yes, they have a right to block you, but that doesn't imply that a terms of
service which prohibits automated access is legally enforceable. A TOS is not
a contract so you can't put whatever you want in there and expect a court to
honor it. To my knowledge US courts have not decided ohitsdom's question, but
I could be wrong.

However, if the site makes an attempt to block you from automatic access (even
an IP block) and you circumvent it, you're in violation of the Computer Fraud
and Abuse Act. See Craigslist v. 3Taps. (disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer)

~~~
ohitsdom
Thank you, this is the type of info I was looking for.

------
cwilkes
What annoys me about Zillow is that their "number of days on Zillow" is
totally bogus. A house down the street was on the market for 2 months (at a
highly inflated value). Time on Zillow? 2 weeks.

Maybe the time on Zillow is based on repricing or taking it off the market and
putting it back on? Either way if you were looking for homes unless you kept
track of an individual house you wouldn't be any wiser.

Also amusingly the house was a tear down, so the Zestimate was based on the
old crappy house. Which I'm sure the builders loved -- it was half the price
of the newly built home.

~~~
Simulacra
I had this problem a lot. I really wish Zillow allowed you to block houses
from your search, regardless of price changes, relistings, etc. I came across
the same lot of sad, crappy, and overpriced homes over and over, because
Zillow kept erroneously marking them as "just listed!"

~~~
ohitsdom
Zillow does have a "hide" feature, which I used extensively when house-hunting
this year.

------
borkabrak
..aand it's gone.

I just got:

"–This post has been temporarily removed at the request of Zillow. We are
collaborating with them to write a more complete version of the story, and
will have an updated version posted on October 7th.–"

Nothing creepy about that. Certainly doesn't leave me feeling that whatever it
is the article said about Zillow apparently hit them pretty close to home.

~~~
zaius
Archive.org has the original (for the time being) -
[https://web.archive.org/web/20151006173818/https://www.build...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151006173818/https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/zillow-
realtor-listing-war)

~~~
inanutshellus
Looks like it has even been taken down from Archive.org!

------
patja
Looking at the C&D letter, it seems that Zillow is saying any use of their
site for commercial use is prohibited. Wouldn't that cover traditional print
journalists doing a similar story, or any story that made use of information
gleaned from Zillow?

Why didn't Bloomberg receive a C&D for this story which says "Bloomberg used
data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Zillow Group Inc. and Bankrate.com to
quantify how much more money millennials would need to earn each year to
afford a home in the largest U.S. cities."
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/these-
are-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/these-are-
the-13-cities-where-millennials-can-t-afford-a-home)

I guess nobody except the EFF really wants to take on this type of fight.

~~~
declan
[a] Journalists using Zillow's site would likely be viewed as personal or
editorial use, not commercial use.

[b] Bloomberg probably worked with Zillow.

[c] I'm not sure EFF would be interested in this. It's pretty standard TOS
language, and when EFF did get involved in the Craigslist/Padmapper case, it
was (correctly) interested in stomping on idiotic CFAA theories of liability
and the exclusive license point. If Zillow tried to strongarm journalists,
that would be a different story, but they have not done so as far as I know.

Background: I was a journalist before founding
[https://recent.io/](https://recent.io/) and would often get approached by
companies like Zillow to write about what their data showed.

------
alyx
Anybody know of any good sources of MLS data for programmatic consumption
(even if not free)?

~~~
garethsprice
There aren't any. All the regional MLS' are separate entities and make it as
annoying/difficult/expensive as possible to access their data programatically.
Think having to be a licensed broker, then paying for access to download a
daily CSV with all active listings.

Who'd have thought that an industry of middlemen would make it hard to reduce
friction in their marketplace...

(Source: building websites with MLS integration for real estate offices)

~~~
ericd
There are, ListHub, unless you don't think it qualifies as a "good" source?
We've been happy enough with it, but we're only on the rentals side of things.

------
nickgrosvenor
Redfin is more accurate than zillow, They list new listings much faster and
the interface is better. I'm in LA and redfin is superior.

~~~
rhc2104
Redfin is pretty different from Zillow, since they directly sell homes. So
they will have better/faster listings directly from the MLS.

But they only have listings for the regions where they sell homes, so they
have nothing for most of the United States.

~~~
Bartkusa
Most Americans currently live in areas served by Redfin.

Most of the US is very sparsely populated, so I don't think that's a good
measure of coverage. Rural areas and smaller cities deserve service, too, but
that'll come with time.

(I'm currently employed by Redfin.)

------
pbreit
I like how they speculate that where Zillow has more listings that it could be
because Zillow has database or data scrubbing problems and not the other way
around.

~~~
Pinatubo
Realtor.com has access to the actual MLS, while Zillow does not.

------
deraker
Looks like this article has been taken down by the authors now due to a cease
and desist:

[http://www.inman.com/2015/10/06/buildzoom-calls-zillow-
out-f...](http://www.inman.com/2015/10/06/buildzoom-calls-zillow-out-for-
alleged-data-quality-issues/)

Article is gone from original source too... Obviously nothing to see here
folks ;)

------
justinzollars
As a recent home buyer, I found Zillow information to be at least one week out
of date. In most cities, that probably isn't a big deal; however in the San
Francisco Bay area I found the site pretty useless because all of the homes I
was interested in, I was unable to see because they were usually off the
market, pending or very late in the process where I was unable to visit the
home.

I ended up using a Sotheby's owned site, with accurate data.

Additionally, their Zillow Estimate information is at least 20% low in SF,
even by admission of their own analysis:
[http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc](http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc)

The benefit I should mention is that I met a great Realtor through their ads,
which he admitted to spending thousands of dollars on per month on.

~~~
beambot
To be fair... in a lot of SFBA locales, homes are selling for 20% over list
anyway. So even sellers (and agents) are having a hard time pricing the
demand.

~~~
justinzollars
my realtor was able to estimate the price better than Zillow, I feel like they
need a better machine learning model to accommodate different markets.
(Denver, SF and Ohio are very different places)

~~~
jrochkind1
In my recent long home search period, I didn't trust Zillow's price estimates
at all. But i used Zillow religiously because it's UI/UX is just so good, so
much better than the competition, I could do a survey of what's out there
easier and quicker, and find out more of what I wanted to know about
interesting listings.

Zillow "zestimate" seems to be something they're known for, but I don't think
it's actually their strength as a product.

------
xacaxulu
It doesn't seem surprising that Zillow is pump-and-dumping in an already
extremely bubbly market.

~~~
toomuchtodo
While you didn't provide any evidence, I agree with you. The housing market
didn't "rebound" per se; investors soaked up all of the distressed inventory
while previous owners fled to rentals. This masked the underlying fundamentals
of the real estate market.

In some markets (SF, Texas), you have a lot of foreign (read: Chinese) money
flowing in fleeing less than favorable jurisdictions. That should hold prices
up there (as well as the other obvious reasons SF pricing will be held high;
Texas is a new phenomenon).

Other markets though are (in my opinion) being held up by extremely low
mortgage rates (<4%), and as soon as the Fed starts their march upward, you're
going to see home prices come down. This doesn't even begin to address Boomers
who are going to want to downsize to unlock their equity for retirement,
flooding the market.

~~~
uptown
I think xacaxulu was referring to Zillow, the company - not the housing
market.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Ugh, I really need to not touch HN until I drink a cup of coffee in the
morning.

------
staunch
I lost all faith in Zillow when I realized their estimate was just a number
based on their guess at a price per square foot times the square footage...

A properties _historical_ "Zestimate" changes if you update the _current_
square footage. Whatajoke!

~~~
nkozyra
I somehow doubt it's that simplistic, though I imagine price/sqft is a heavy
factor. And it should be, really. If you can find sales in the neighborhood
and compute their price/sqft, there should be some relationship, modifiable by
other features (pool, central air, etc.)

Case in point, my house's Zestimate comes out to $105/sqft, and my neighbor's
comes in at $100/sqft. A neighbor _without_ a pool's house comes in at
$96/sqft. That would indicate that their "guess" is where the magic is - a
price per square foot is computed based on factors that are not readily
apparent.

------
kelukelugames
Redfin is not even listed. Snubbed.

~~~
blue11
Personally, I've always found Redfin so much better than Zillow in the areas
that are covered by Redfin (better data, better UI, overall better user
experience). Having lived only in such areas for more than 10 years, I was
surprised a few years ago to discover that Zillow was the industry leader.

------
JustSomeNobody
The article's conclusion left me feeling kinda meh. The article made me feel
like it was leading up to something and then "... is destined for an uphill
battle.". Well, yeah? Anytime you base your business on someone else's data,
you run the risk of the carpet getting yanked out from underneath you.

------
ryanSrich
Semi related. In Portland every single house on Zillow was actually already
sold. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but it was very annoying. The only
app that would show houses that were actually still on the market was Redfin.
Has anyone else in a different area experienced this?

------
cyrillevincey
Post deleted upon Zillow's request?

------
elec3647
Article was taken down. Does anyone have it archived/alternative link?

------
saidajigumi
Mods: the title of this HN post is not the title of the linked article, which
at this writing is the somewhat less clickbaity "What Zillow Doesn’t Want You
To Know". In fact, the c&d part, while important, could almost be seen as a
distraction from the larger issues of MLS listing access discussed in the
article.

~~~
Simulacra
True, this is true, and technically against the rules. Post Title and Article
Title must agree. The poster must be popular or someone affiliated with the
mods, else they would've had their posting rights revoked by now.

~~~
dang
> _Post Title and Article Title must agree_

No, the rule is "Please use the original title unless it is misleading or
linkabit." That "unless" is critical. I wish we had some linguistic superglue
to keep the two clauses stuck together—they always fall apart in shipping and
the first bit is the only one people remember.

> _The poster must be popular or someone affiliated with the mods, else they
> would 've had their posting rights revoked by now._

Don't assume omniscience! We miss things. Also, we don't revoke posting rights
because of titles unless people break the rules a lot.

~~~
vonmoltke
Reorder the clauses perhaps?

> Unless it is misleading or linkbait, please use the original title.

It is common practice in legalese, and this may be the reason.

~~~
dang
Clever! May try that.

