

Ask HN: Why do I need to use links' original titles? - sparktherapy

Some general news headlines are not really written up to &quot;hacker standards&quot;. For example, the current #1 post is this: &quot;Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings (bbc.co.uk)&quot; and many of the comments are about how the stock price itself doesn&#x27;t matter.<p>Similarly, there&#x27;s &quot;Sleep Flushes Toxins from the Brain (bbc.co.uk)&quot; which annoyed several readers as well.<p>Some other titles are quite obscure &amp; vague. I remember seeing &quot;Reveal.js&quot;, but finding the site to be unreachable, and totally being unable to figure out what it does. It feels like linkbait because I can&#x27;t figure out what it is until I click on it.<p>In general, it&#x27;d be good to summarize articles in titles, instead of simply using their original titles. Does anyone agree?
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tjr
I believe the problem this policy aims to solve is one of HN submitters
inserting their own bias into self-written titles.

Whereas if the original title is used, then any bias in the title is confined
to that of the article author / publisher.

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pg
Or making mistakes. A significant number of rewritten titles are false.

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sparktherapy
Thanks for your detailed post
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466)).

