Once a story is on the front page, it's in a completely different category than the /newest page, so we can't just "let upvotes decide". Even when there's a strictly better URL, by far the most likely outcome is that it would languish unnoticed on /newest. If it did get noticed and lead to a front page discussion, we'd then have the problem of two separate front page discussions (i.e. dupes). The upshot is that improving the URL (hopefully it's an improvement!) on an existing front page post is one of the important things that mods do here.
"Changing [the url] from under them" is standard moderation practice on HN - we do that every day. Ditto for titles. So I'm not sure it counts as "super weird"?
The paywall issue is orthogonal to this one. If there is a workaround, a paywalled URL is ok. If there is no workaround, it's not ok, no matter how "good" the URL is.
It was weird to find out that it's done in the first place! I didn't know moderation took a post that hits front page to become HN's more than the author but can see now how it makes sense. Thanks for answering and for keeping a great community going for so long!
"Changing [the url] from under them" is standard moderation practice on HN - we do that every day. Ditto for titles. So I'm not sure it counts as "super weird"?
The paywall issue is orthogonal to this one. If there is a workaround, a paywalled URL is ok. If there is no workaround, it's not ok, no matter how "good" the URL is.