Propose HN: Boycott submissions with inaccurate titles to eradicate linkbait

[Hexstream]

I've seen the rise of linkbaiting in the last few months and I feel that the problem has achieved mythic proportions and that it will only be getting worse because of the obvious incentives:

Linkbait title = more people look at the article = more people upvote it = people see that linkbaiting is a valid strategy

As I remarked on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503422, if a sizeable proportion of HN starts boycotting submissions with inaccurate titles, then the new way to get people to read your article would be to write an accurate title! The dynamic would be flipped on its head:

Linkbait title = nobody reads the article = nobody upvotes it = people see that linkbaiting is self-defeating.

So I propose we implement this. Here's the algorithm:

When clicking through to an article, summarily verify that the title is an accurate depiction of the content of the article. If it isn't, don't read the article, and post a comment with something to the effect of: "I refuse to read this article on the grounds that the submission's title isn't an accurate depiction of the content of the article", then state what the article is actually about. If somebody else already posted that and their summary appears accurate after a summary inspection of the article, upvote the comment.

I'd also advocate not to start any discussion (even if worthwhile) on a submission guilty of linkbait. I suspect a lot of people look at the number of comments as a proxy for interestingness of the article. Any worthwhile discussion that could take place in that bad submission's comments thread could very well grow on a good submission's...

Of course I wouldn't want to skip on great articles because the first submission has an inaccurate title, so I encourage new submissions of the same article with accurate titles. The anti-multisubmission feature, or whatever it's called, could get in the way, I'm not sure what to do about that yet.

The best would be to always have accurate titles, but obviously it can be hard to summarize the submission correctly in just a few words. I'd settle for just eliminating submissions with titles that were obviously crafted for maximum viewership with complete disregard for accuracy.

Who's with me?

[tdavis]

...Take off every Zig?!

You're making this really complicated. Just flag everything with a linkbait title. If enough people do that, it will get an editor's attention, and they can (hopefully) determine the reason for all the flagging is the title (linkbait titles are easy to identify) and change it.

[Hexstream → tdavis]

I don't think that's quite enough. There's a finite amount of editors and it will always take some time before they can fix a title, if they do so at all.

And by the time they rectify the situation, the submission will likely have gotten a number of upvotes in the most critical part of its life, due to the linkbait title.

Also, AFAIK we normal users can't see the number of flaggings a submission has had, so with due respect, I don't want to rely 100% on editors to have the initiative in this whole affair, in this time and age I'd prefer something more crowd-sourced.

[davi]

From your algorithm:

When clicking through to an article, summarily verify that the title is an accurate depiction of the content of the article. If it isn't, don't read the article ... then state what the article is actually about.

Is this a joke?

How about a 'linkbait' link next to the 'flag' link. Or just tolerate it.

Linkbait titles are a problem, but your solution is not for me.

[Hexstream → davi]

"Linkbait titles are a problem, but your solution is not for me."

I'm fine with that. It's just version 0.1. I was trying to go for a solution that doesn't require more code.

But sure, what about just flagging all linkbait titles and, crucially, showing the number of flaggings for everyone to see.

[davi → Hexstream]

Maybe the karma accrued to the submitter should equal upvotes to the article, minus how many linkbait clicks it receives (with a floor of zero).

[anamax]

> I've seen the rise of linkbaiting in the last few months and I feel that the problem has achieved mythic proportions and that it will only be getting worse because of the obvious incentives:

Is it (otherwise) nice to live in a world where HN linkbait is that significant an issue?

[nertzy]

If it isn't, don't read the article ... then state what the article is actually about.

At the very least I hope that you would read the article before deciding what it's actually about.

[Hexstream → nertzy]

But you don't need to read it in full to know what it's about, a quick skimming should do. I don't count that as reading the article.

[Raphael]

Gee, we just met. I can't accept this ring.