
Ask HN Mods: Why Do You Completely Change What Users Submit? - unclebucknasty
I recently submitted an item:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8052399<p>It made it to and remained on the front page for a while. Then, after some hours, ~180 votes and many comments, a HN mod changed the title completely and also modified the URL to a <i>completely different article</i> on a different site.<p>I understand that the new article might have provided additional detail (which another user had also indicated on the comments thread), but why is HN <i>completely changing</i> what its users are posting, while still attributing it to those users? It&#x27;s odd to have something attributed to me that I did not submit. And, if the answer is that &quot;the topic was the same&quot;, &quot;the first article referenced the second&quot;, or similar, then it seems that editorializing to this extent wholly changes what HN is about. That is, why not just have users submit proposed topics for discussion rather than URLs?<p>And, what of any quotes or references to the initially submitted URL in the comments section?<p>BTW, on the one hand, it seems fairer to allow the user to keep karma earned for the article (as HN did), but this begs the question that if so many people had already upvoted the article, then might it have already been &quot;sufficient&quot;?
======
benjamincburns
I asked a very similar question of dang [1] about two months ago when he
decided to change an article's URL to one I added to the comments [2].

His response to me (w/ irrelevant stuff redacted):

    
    
        The short answer is that HN's goal is quality, so that's
        what we optimize for. Optimizing means trading other things
        away. One thing we're willing to trade away–if it's a clear
        win for quality–is fidelity to the original submission. HN's
        focus should always be on the content, and the details of the
        original submission are of little interest compared to the
        subject at hand.
        
        HN isn't a purist's kind of place. Our goal to make the
        front page and the threads as interesting and substantive
        as possible. We change a lot of things to serve that
        principle. If we knew how to serve it better, we'd happily
        break more crockery to do so.
        
        Someone (perhaps a purist!) will object that terms like
        "quality", "interesting", and "substantive" have no precise
        definitions and are in the eye of the beholder. True, but (a)
        they're not arbitrary either, (b) the alternatives suck, and
        (c) someone has to make the calls. We don't get them all right,
        but we do try hard to correct mistakes, and I'll defend the
        principle any day.
    

1: dang = Daniel Gackle, HN's moderator. [http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-
the-people-taking-over-hack...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-
taking-over-hacker-news)

2: Original thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7747401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7747401)

~~~
karterk
I simply don't like the fact that someone can change a link that I submitted
to something else. Moderators have the right to kill a story or ban a user for
valid reasons, but changing a link to point to another completely different
article is just being pedantic and definitely crosses the line. We might as
well then just post topics, and let the mods choose the best story for that
topic.

~~~
hnha
Do people pay attention to who submits items? I never do. Maybe the display of
the submitter could be removed without any loss.

~~~
mbrutsch
> Do people pay attention to who submits items?

Would we be having this conversation if they didn't?

~~~
gravedave
I think he primarily referred to other readers, this topic was posted by a
submitter.

------
falcolas
The guidance on this is pretty confusing, I agree. On one hand, we have this:

    
    
      If you want to add initial commentary on the link, write a blog post about it and submit that instead.
    

On the other, we get this:

    
    
      If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.
    

So, which is it? Report just the original source without the additional
discussion, or the additional discussion if you feel it worth the talk?

It worries me how much power a few people hold over submissions. A few flags
on a popular topic, and it's burned to the ground. A few people complaining in
the comments about the "original source", and the entire post is changed. It
just feels wrong.

~~~
onewaystreet
Sounds pretty clear to me: If you write an opinionated blog post on an article
you are free to submit it just as much as the person who submits the article
itself. But if your blog post is just a summary of the article it's probably
going to get removed.

~~~
falcolas
I would agree, if reality had matched up with this theory. I've watched many
insightful blog posts be replaced with the original article over the last
year. Usually as a result of a few people just linking to the original article
(despite some dozen plus other threads continuing the conversation started by
the blog).

Sadly, no, I don't have links (and it's not something you can search for), so
you'll have to take me at my word, and choose an appropriate amount of salt to
go with it.

------
jffry
Maybe it's as simple as having a changelog on titles. If a mod changes the
link or title, you could show something to indicate that on the frontpage, and
on the comments page show more details like what the original link/title was,
and what it was changed to, and by whom.

IOW it seems like transparency in moderation is what you really need. This
would also solve the problem of original discussion referencing the old
article no longer making sense when the article changes.

~~~
sergiotapia
Dang is really transparent about his modifications. I always see him posting a
comment on many threads about title changes, and voting ring detections etc.
He's a great moderator who does a tremendous job.

~~~
clarky07
A comment at the bottom of a 180+ comment thread is not sufficient. I'm always
annoyed when I get to a comment thread that is talking about a different
article than the one I clicked on. There needs to at least be an indication in
the UI that this happened.

------
k-mcgrady
I'm perfectly fine with them changing to a better sourced URL and a more
accurate title - however I never thought about your attribution point. If they
change both of these things you now have something attributed to you that has
absolutely nothing to do with you. That definitely seems like it could cause
problem, especially for people who are not 'anonymous' and are using real
names.

~~~
pepon
"I'm perfectly fine with them changing to a better sourced URL and a more
accurate title"

I can see how this behavior can bring some benefits. However, what if the mods
just change the urls in order to point to their own blogs? Or to blogs where
the opinion expressed shares their view or supports the interests of whoever?
That behavior can dangerously lead to manipulation.

I do not like the fact that I can see some news in the front page with 200
votes and the article that I read is not the one that received those 200
hundreds votes.

I also do not like at all the attribution issue that you mentioned.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's publicly known who the HN mods are AFAIK so if they were personally
benefitting from changing the links the community would know about it.

>> "Or to blogs where the opinion expressed shares their view or supports the
interests of whoever?"

This is what got me thinking about the dangers of attribution, particularly
when linking to a political article.

I think the reasons for changing titles and links (click-bait, blogspam
instead of source) is sound but we as a community need to police it and
generally that's done pretty well. When links or titles are changed there is
usually a comment from someone who noticed and the comment usually lets people
know of the original link/title.

------
dang
You submitted
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/documents...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/documents_show_gchq_manipulating_online_information_like_web_polls_and_traffic.html).
That's just a digest [1] of the firstlook.org article [2], so a moderator
correctly changed it.

Every major article spawns countless knockoffs as media outlets compete for
views. The HN guidelines ask you to post the original source. When you don't,
moderators change it. When we don't, users ask us to.

This is routine moderation that we do every day. Tracking down better sources
is one way that the community and moderators keep up quality here. We'd prefer
it, of course, if submitters would do this before posting.

When I change a url, I often post a comment saying so. The other moderators
can't, because they're not public. It isn't clear to me yet what to do about
that.

Story submissions on HN are not the property of the submitter. They are
pointers, not values—the content belongs to the source, and the HN slot
belongs to the site and to the community. If changing the address in that slot
makes the site better, we do.

(Comments are different. Story titles are not supposed to be your own words;
comments are. We never change those, except on rare occasions when users ask
us to.)

I know it sounds subjective and arbitrary to say "make the site better", as if
by fiat, but it's less arbitrary than it sounds. The community nearly always
agrees about one source being better than another. (I'd be surprised if there
were much disagreement in the present case.) And on the relatively few
occasions when users think we've made the wrong call, we usually change it.

1\. High-end blogspam might be a more accurate way of putting it.

2\.
[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-
online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/)

~~~
discostrings
Could you comment about how the item was buried shortly after the changes?

If it wasn't buried by a mod, then either the penalty that's applied to
surveillance stories is incredibly enormous, or the story was flagged into
oblivion by users. Did flagging only start after the title and link were
changed? Isn't that quite suspicious? It really looks like someone's doing
title/domain/url monitoring for stories to flag, and this story is a good
candidate for examination.

I guess I'd just like confirmation that 1) mods didn't bury the story, and 2)
it doesn't look like flagging suddenly increased after the change. If flagging
did suddenly increase, it would be strong evidence of flagging abuse. There's
no explanation for flagging the second story and not the first, other than
failure to detect it automatically. In fact, you would expect the exact
opposite pattern if the story were being flagged legitimately.

Thanks.

~~~
dang
You've asked this several times, so I'm not sure where to put the answer.
Let's try here.

(By the way, one reason we ask people to send moderation questions to
hn@ycombinator.com is that then we're sure to see them. We can't possibly read
every post to the site. We miss most of them, in fact.)

The story fell off the front page because of a moderator penalty, though user
flags caused the fall to be more dramatic.

We're not trying to suppress surveillance stories [1]. We're trying to balance
it so the major ones get attention but the me-toos don't crowd out other
things. A moderator thought this was a me-too rather than a major. I might
have made the opposite call, but it was probably a borderline case. For one
thing, the article was shorter, and that's usually but not always correlated
with lesser substance. Since we can't come close to reading everything, we're
forced to rely on such heuristics. They're miserable, but they mostly work.

We moderate this way not because of personal opinion (I'm personally more
inclined the other way, for what that's worth), but because if we didn't, the
site would skew heavily toward these stories and there would be many more
complaints (remember "Why has Hacker News turned into NSA News"?) than there
currently are. The HN community is in disagreement here. Our job is to mediate
that. Which of course is impossible. So we try to fail less badly.

We're open to suggestions about how to get the balance better. We do need to
balance it somehow. The idea that votes can just determine everything—without
irrevocably changing the character of the site—is sadly, utterly wrong.

Some of the most vocal feedback we're getting on the surveillance stories is
from people who seem only to care about this one issue and would happily have
it dominate HN. That feedback isn't so helpful, because it's at odds with what
this site is. But if those of you who follow this issue closely would help us
make better editorial distinctions between the major stories and the pilers-
on, we'd be grateful. We're not domain experts on any of this.

1\. To pick an obvious example,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058362)
has been on the front page all day.

~~~
discostrings
Thank you for the detailed explanation of what happened to the post and your
thoughts on the topic in general. I'm happy to hear that what's been going on
with some of the bigger surveillance stories is the result of the difficulties
of moderation and not external manipulation. I now have a greater
understanding of why efforts to stop the topic from dominating the site end up
supressing it.

As it seems you noticed, my main frustration is that surveillance stories with
new information, and other particularly insightful pieces about the topic,
often aren't staying on the front page, which essentially means that no one
sees or discusses them at any level of depth. HN is generally so good at what
it does that for most topics of interest to the community, it can be one's
daily news source for an overview of what's going on. Readers come to expect
that topics that interest HN will be covered well and that important
developments will be posted. So it's particularly jarring after reading tech-
related news only from HN for a few days to see you missed a major
surveillance story, especially one that deals with the tech or tools. When you
search HN and see you missed it because it was submitted but probably buried
before anyone discussed it, you start feeling that moderators are parting ways
with the community or that something sinister is going on.

I think a number of other difficulties arise as a result of the major stories
not showing up. I imagine users start getting the sense that an important
topic isn't being discussed, so they submit and upvote even more "me-too"
stories. On the stories that do make it, people don't bother writing long and
substantive comments because of the risk of the post dropping to oblivion at
any moment and no one ever seeing the comment. Those who know a lot about the
topic become less likely to write about it insightfully here, increasing the
noise further and giving the topic a worse reputation for quality.

How to improve things is a difficult questions, as this topic's scenario
really doesn't play to the site's strengths. It seems there's really no
feature for "best-of-a-type" other than penalties.

Never-the-less, here are a few ideas (some of which are assuredly overly vague
or simplistic, but since I don't know which might be helpful...): \-
Consideration could be given to how many surveillance stories are currently on
the front page. Very few people want an entire front page filled with these
stories every day, but given the level of interest and the continuing
developments one would still expect to see a number of stories every day or
two. Maybe only resort to giving a penalty to an article that isn't obviously
low quality / blogspam if there are already surveillance stories on the front
page?

\- Using heuristics concerning novelty, and whether the particular novel issue
has been discussed on HN, could supplement length

\----- A quick check of whether the article claims it's new information, the
date of the article, and a general search for the main claim of the article

\----- Less scrutiny of publications with a history of breaking stories or
that have access to documents, like theguardian.com, firstlook.org,
washingtonpost.com, and spiegel.de

\- A way to know a topic isn't going to quickly disappear after investing time
in writing a comment would be nice. Some indicator that a topic has been
"blessed" by a mod and won't receive a penalty would be helpful for this.

\- Having a moderator who follows the topic might be helpful. I definitely
understand that not every moderator does, and that it's probably really hard
to make judgments if you're not following it. Someone a bit more familiar with
the topic would be a good resource and could keep an eye out for sub-optimal
penalties being given out.

\- In general, visible transparency about what's going on would be helpful.
I'm not sure how to achieve that because the site's not really designed for
it. Talking to you here is great. Having other people with the same concerns
get the information is important too.

\- The root issue isn't really that interest in the topic is too high--it's
that there's a low signal-to-noise ratio in the stories that are submitted and
the passion for the topic is so high that even the noise is upvoted. Some
users probably want to make sure everyone knows what's going on. Once a normal
level of the best stories are making the front page and there's an outlet for
that passion, perhaps the submission problem will decrease and a virtuous
cycle will begin.

I'll email first in the future for anything I'd like a response about or if I
have more suggestions--I took the comment approach because in the case of a
forum or many other online communities, it would be better to have the
conversation publicly, but I agree that HN's not really set up well for that
(as evidenced by my multiple requests for a response).

Again, I'm grateful for your response, and I greatly appreciate the work
you're doing here and your commitment to addressing users' concerns.

~~~
dang
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. I agree with almost all of it.

I'm not sure how practical these particular suggestions are--for example, we
do already try to identify which issues have already been discussed on HN;
it's just hard to get right every time. But I do think the pendulum has
perhaps swung too far the other way, so we've provisionally turned off the
automatic weight on NSA stories. Going forward, I hope the community will help
us distinguish major articles from minor ones. People can do that by flagging
minor ones and commenting here or (better) emailing hn@ycombinator.com if they
see a major one that they think might be weighted unfairly. We can override
the flags when that happens.

HN's goals here are balance and substance.

------
JohnTHaller
HN is not as open as other group sites like, say, reddit where it's up to the
users to decide what's important. It's run with a specific purpose of quality
of stories within a specific set of topics and a vehicle for promotion of YC-
related content. Voting exists to provide group input within those guidelines.

The bit about writing a blog post and submitting it is out-of-date based on
current mod behavior. If you want to provide commentary, post the original
source and add a comment. Links to blogs are nearly always pulled for the
original source unless the blog is the original source on an overall trend,
research, etc.

~~~
hnha
take a look at /r/undelete some day. Reddit is frighteningly unopen.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It varies quite a bit by subreddit, of course. Some mods like to rule their
little fiefdoms.

~~~
Pacabel
This is very true.

Many of the subreddits that are very specific to a given technology or
programming language or something like that are often the worst. The audience
is comparatively small to begin with, and mostly made up of people who hold
the technology in high esteem. Any user who submits comments that may be
deemed as slightly negative or questioning of the technology are targeted and
"eliminated", so to speak.

This leads to a very toxic environment where quality content and discussion
become totally non-existent.

------
moron4hire
Especially after the discussion has referenced the original article, now the
entire context is broken.

But in the end, they can have whatever rules they want and it would still be
bad because of one problem that prevails all of mod activity: that there is
just so infrequently any notification that anything happened. Don't enforce
them in secret, leading us to wonder what, when, and why something happened.

------
swehner
@unclebucknasty, could you show your original submission for comparison?

At
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8052399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8052399)
it says right now: "Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to
Control the Internet", which is linked to
[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-
online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/)

What did you originally post?

~~~
discostrings
Here's a comment of mine from that thread explaining what he posted, how it
changed, and what happened [~]:

This story was in the first position on the front page less than an hour ago.
It was there for hours. The link was then changed from [0] to [1], and within
thirty minutes, it was on the second page at number 47. (It first took a drop
to around 17, hovered there for a while, then hit 47.)

Could we have an explanation of what's going on here? How can penalties from
flagging be this steep for a story with 200 upvotes and 90 comments? Why did
the position suddenly change shortly after the link was changed, but not right
away?

[0]
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/documents...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/documents_show_gchq_manipulating_online_information_like_web_polls_and_traffic.html)

[1]
[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-
online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/)

[~]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8054173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8054173)

~~~
misiti3780
interestingly enough , I submitted [1] after it was initially published and no
one cared

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8031791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8031791)

~~~
discostrings
No one cared because it was quickly buried, which could quite possibly be due
to a flag ring or automated monitoring for flagging of the firstlook.org
domain. Here's my other comment on the topic [~]:

It would be incredibly easy to use this sort of program to game visibility on
HN.

This story itself serves as the perfect example. When it was submitted four
days ago [0], it quickly took a huge ranking hit and dropped off the front
page. When a story drops off the front page this quickly, it's nearly
impossible for it to get the upvote momentum required to gain any additional
visibility. And the same URL can't be submitted again, so the opportunity for
discussion of the article has essentially been removed.

Then, we're left discussing a breaking story as the top item four days later,
when a summary report about the original story that contains no new
information is published on Slate.

One might be quick to blame moderators, but in the discussion of another
recent First Look story, dang said most of the penalty came from users
flagging the story. [1] How many users flagging the story does it take to
produce this outcome? Does GCHQ just need three accounts with a little karma
to seriously diminish visibility here for days? Safeguards should be developed
to prevent this sort of malicious activity. Maybe some sort of collusion
penalty, where if the same users are flagging the same stories, the effect is
diminished? Or a greater restriction on the maximum penalty?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8031791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8031791)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008472)

EDIT: And it's happened again! This story was #1 when the link was to [3].
About a half hour ago, the link was changed to firstlook.org, and within
minutes, the story fell to the center of the main page. Now, thirty minutes
later, it's at number 47 (with 200 points after six hours). It was at the top
for hours, then dropped to 47 within thirty minutes of the link being changed.
The fact that flagging happened right after the link was changed seriously
suggests that some someone has automated monitoring for First Look links to
flag.

[3]
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/documents...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/15/documents_show_gchq_manipulating_online_information_like_web_polls_and_traffic.html)

[~]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053852)

------
aburan28
The mods here are out of control to the point where I'm considering going back
to Reddit completely. The fact the stories are being censored due to "topic
association" despite having enough up-votes is ridiculous.

~~~
onewaystreet
Which stories?

~~~
sirsar
NSA for example. Any topic with "NSA" gets a very large hit.

~~~
akerl_
I'm willing to bet that has way more to do with the substantial body of people
flagging down all the NSA posts than some mod conspiracy

~~~
justsee
Where do you go to get this definitive data on HN activities?

~~~
tptacek
From Daniel Gackle, who comments on the stories that get buried.

~~~
reuwsaat
That's exactly the problem. You received that info directly from a third
person. There is no transparency. Would you believe everything I say? I
wouldn't. But if the facts where out there you wouldn't need to. On an issue
such as this where people take such sustained and intense interest, your
second hand account of someone giving you their word is not sufficient. Maybe
it is for you, but please don't condescend by passing it along as though it
must be for others.

~~~
tptacek
The third person is the site moderator. And yes, I believe pretty much
whatever Daniel tells me. He's that kind of guy.

"That Daniel Gackle is the HN moderator" is the kind of factual detail you
might want to know before developing very strong opinions about how the site
is run.

~~~
reuwsaat
Please see my other comment on this page where explicitly say I completely
agree HN is in the right in running a site in this manner. I was just trying
to point out that while you may know Daniel others might not. And, again, I
believe that a moderator system is 100% fine. HN news has made it work and
produces quality content. But, for someone to tell me that since they know
someone I should keep my trap shut, it's a little presumptuous.

~~~
tptacek
First, nobody told you to keep your trap shut.

Second, if you don't trust the site moderators, HN isn't going to be a
pleasant place to spend time.

~~~
reuwsaat
sheesh. your comment isn't a pleasant place to spent time. someone needs some
internet kitten love.

------
ejr
This might seem simplistic, but couldn't this problem be solved with a
"related" list?

It's been many moons since I've been to Digg, but it had a notification if
you're submitting a post with a similar title/URL. While we're discussing it,
it may not hurt to have a "previous discussion" list either.

Opinions, information other relevant factors can change over time, so it may
not be so bad to revisit a topic.

------
logicallee
I think this question would have been better via email to the mods. There's a
good chance they would have reverted for you based on what you've mentioned in
this particular instance. For what it's worth, while they are only human, I
think the mods do a _great_ job with both titles and (more rarely) changing
URL.

When a URL is changed, it is a way of saying, 'Look, we think this other URL
is better for the discussion', while keeping the discussion. Daniel does a
great job of mentioning these changes in a comment - hardly ever to a
complaint.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang)
for some of Daniel's comments.

Title changes are also generally good ones. Often they happen in response to a
complaint.

If you don't like it, email the mods with why!

They do a fantastic job. I approve of changing the titles (even silently) or
URL's, especially with a comment. If you have a complaint do feel free to
email the mods about it.

And here's a thanks to the great work the mods do and to hoping they will keep
it up.

You're only reading Hacker News thanks to their tireless work.

~~~
Kwasea
Nonesense.! I am sure there are lots of people who submit links for reasons
other than karma and HN base discussions. Not everyone will appreciate the
redirection of traffic from their researched and well written post. Not to
mention the prestige of making it to the front page!

~~~
Kwasea
I knew I'd be downvoted but its the unpalatable truth

------
DanBC
1) slate is a shitty source. There are a bunch of websites that keep getting
posted to HN and those sites are really fucking awful. I hope mods have a
panel that flags up any time those sites are posted so they can chose whether
to change the source to something better or not.

2) mods usually mention that they've changed the source or the title.

3) I gently agree that having the title / source changed but leaving it
attribed to the original submitter is odd. But at least that person is still
getting the karma. I imagine people would be much less happy if the mods put
their name on the articles.

4) So far I haven't seen any example of mod changing urls or titles that I
disagree with; I have seen plenty that I am very pleased with.

------
jcr
I'm not a mod, but I can answer your three main questions.

1.) Why do titles get changed?

2.) Why do URLs get changed?

3.) Why do things drop off the front page?

The first two questions are answered in the HN guidelines:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

In short, is says to always avoid "linkbait" and misleading titles, and always
submit the original source URL. If someone suggests a URL to the original
source, then changing the URL helps everybody. The same is true for changing
bad titles. Regurgitated blogspam with a linkbaiit title is always annoying,
and most aggregators fight against it every single day.

The third question is tougher to answer, since you'd need to do a whole lot of
reading. The two most common things which will cause the rank of a submission
to drop are users flagging the story, and setting off the voting ring detector
(i.e. trying to fake up-votes).

Sam Altman (hn user: sama, YC S05, and a YC Partner) mentioned the ring voting
detector issues here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7972941)

And somewhere in the comments of our fearless public moderator Daniel Gackle
(hn user: dang) was mentioned the issue about user flags affecting the rank of
stories.

Your fourth question:

4.) Is it fair to attribute something to a user that they did not actually
submit?

If you failed to follow the guidelines, then yes, it is fair because it helps
everyone else on HN.

For notes, I've had titles of my submissions edited for clarity, and the only
part that bothers me is that I made a moderator do unnecessary work that I
should have done myself.

EDIT: Found the link where dang mentions user flags sinking a story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008472)

~~~
eXpl0it3r
I think we all understand these points, however people such as the OP seem to
have their URL/title changed, even though it doesn't "violate" the guidelines,
but just because some seem to think differently in the comments.

I can't really judge since I haven't noticed such changes, it's just what I
take away from the discussions above.

~~~
dang
> seem to have their URL/title changed, even though it doesn't "violate" the
> guidelines

Posting original sources is an HN guideline, and an important one.

------
theodpHN
On this issue, Slashdot strikes a pretty good compromise, I think, by
providing a link below their posted item to the original submission, i.e., in
the "You may like to read:" section.

------
jerryr
Because the OP continues to receive points for the modified title/URL, it
seems as though the current system incentivizes "first to post", not "highest
quality". Would it be better if the mods could more aggressively sink poor
content with weighted downvotes? This way, the original submission remains
attributed to the OP--title and all. If it's a bad/misleading title, secondary
source, etc. it might be briefly interesting, but then modded down in favor of
better content. But if it remains interesting to the community, it could
remain afloat with enough upvotes. It seems like this system would be fair in
terms of attribution while incentivizing people to submit primary sources with
good titles.

Sorry to bikeshed here, but curious why it doesn't work this way? Too much
work? Is there too much luck involved in making it to the front page & mods
are interested in changing poor content into good content rather than hoping
the good content will eventually make it there itself?

------
djloche
If the shared URL changes, the moderator that changed the post should also re-
attribute the submission to the person that suggested the new link. When this
happens, the system should auto-post 'the original submission: ShortURL by
USER has been modified to ShortURL as suggested by NEW USER.'

------
dang
The HN guidelines ask you not to post questions like this to the site, but
instead to email us: hn@ycombinator.com.

I'm going to demote this submission now. I will come back and read it properly
when I have the several minutes it will take to do so.

I don't remember what happened to item 8052399 at the moment.

~~~
codemaster3000
Ugh what why??? What a terrible way to conduct things. This was the top voted
post on HN today, and there was great discussion happening. In the future,
please consider letting good discussions about HN continue, instead of
immediately censoring criticisms of the site.

~~~
dang
> please consider letting good discussions about HN continue

The discussion is continuing. You just posted to it.

The HN front page has never consisted of just the most upvoted posts. If it
did, HN would be unrecognizable. Whatever you call this policy—people say
'moderation', 'curation', 'censorship', and other things, depending on how
they feel about the most recent thing we did—it isn't secret and it isn't new.

I'm happy to debate this with you till the cows come home, but my first duty
is to see that the stories on the front page are the most intellectually
substantive of the ones currently in play. I'm not seeing that here.

------
beams_of_light
I really don't want to hear another fucking word about "karma" on this site,
ever again. "Karma" is what ruined reddit, with spam and reposting rampant
only for the sake of stupid fucking Internet points. That is not what the
system is meant for.

~~~
p_k
That's an argument I hear a lot, but karma was integral in building the
community when reddit is young. It motivated people to contribute.

------
pain
Why not have a public edit history? (Or why not show multiple versions, one
grayer or smaller print?)

------
chanux
I was once the receiving end of such editing and I thought the mods did the
right thing (Added a better link).

It's probably a good idea to give some visual indication to submissions that
are tampered with though.

------
michaelmcmillan
Considering that there is a lot of users using their own identity, changing
the title - or worse - the actual source of a submission, could result in
misunderstandings.

------
emiliobumachar
Suggestion: to have a checkbox on the submission interface, unticked by
default, that says "remove my name if the content is changed".

If it is ticked on and then someone else changes the title or link, the the
submitter's name is automatically removed.

------
u124556
> It's odd to have something attributed to me that I did not submit.

They could just change the submitter and add something like "Originally
submitted by xxx" below it to let people know it's been changed.

------
EGreg
I think that at least the edited entries should be marked as such! (Maybe in
the footer with a small link to reveal the original.)

------
brador
Solution: If (mod wants to change link AND link is front page) then mod leaves
a comment with link to original.

~~~
tptacek
That's what the moderator currently does.

------
wfjackson
> then it seems that editorializing to this extent wholly changes what HN is
> about

This has been being since very many years, so it doesn't really change
anything per se. It's that you're just realizing it, and lately primary
sources are being preferred more.

~~~
demallien
No, the mods have definitely become heavier recently. I saw one the other day
which was a letter from Richard Feynman to an ex-student, explaining to him,
amongst other things, how to choose problems to work on. The original title
mentioned that it was from Richard Feynman, the modded title was just
something like "How to choose problems to work on", with no mention of
Feynman, which is so generic and boring that I would never have clicked on the
link.

Dear mods, modding is something to use when there is a _clear_ threat to
community values. The default position, if you are in doubt, should be to do
nothing.

~~~
k-mcgrady
The rules around titles are to always use the title from the article. If
people could make up their own titles we could end up with a tonne of click-
bait. There are clearly situations like the one you mention where the title
doesn't do the article justice but I'd rather miss the occasional article that
see a tonne of click-bait and waste my time viewing dozens of shitty articles.

~~~
dmlorenzetti
_The rules around titles are to always use the title from the article._

In general, that is the rule.

The cynic in me couldn't help but notice that an article with the original
title "One of a Kind: What do you do if your child has a condition that is new
to science?" has been on HN's front page for a day now with an alternate
title.

For some reason, the same mods who removed "Feynman" as "click-bait" that is
"not the title from the article" don't seem to have a problem sticking with
the alternate title "Thanks, HN: You helped discover a disease and save lives"
[[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8050106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8050106)].

~~~
chicken_lady
The submitter here is Matt Might, whose family was the subject of the article.
His first comment in the thread makes it obvious why this is an exceptional
case.

~~~
xiaoma
With all due respect, you've only been on HN for a couple of months.

Why would there be an "exception" to the policy of discouraging submitters
from editorializing headlines? Even if the submitter had a personal connection
to the material (which isn't unusual), the guidelines should be respected.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Because the purpose of the guidelines is to make the site better, and changing
that headline would not make the site better.

Also, the headline modifications in that case were not made with the same
intentions that other (harmful) headline modifications are made.

------
zenciadam
We'd rather have a primary source than a click-bait blog post.

------
reuwsaat
am i still hellbanned here?

~~~
schoen
Nope.

~~~
reuwsaat
sweeeet. ty!

------
domiono
I think the HN community will much prefer having an unmoderated HN over a
moderated HN with a bit higher quality as the main reason why people come
here, is that the content here is solely selected by the community.

If however, people find out that HN is much more a controlled environment,
they will surely turn away from HN. So instead of trying to control the whole
thing just in return for a bit of increased quality, rather sacrifice a bit of
quality for an open HN. Of course there can be some moderation, however, it
becomes a bit tricky when titles and content is changed, and upvotes are
controled.

------
Karunamon
Flagged for meta noise.

I'm pretty sure one of the guidelines is to email in for these kind of
questions rather than polluting the frontpage with these kind of posts.

~~~
chris_wot
There's something strange about adding meta noise to a post you believe is
meta noise.

~~~
Karunamon
The entire _thread_ is meta noise.

------
jarnix
Because they are nazis.

------
ramonex
Hacker News mods are just dicks! That's all.

