HACKER Q&A
📣 beardyw

Why do my submitted titles get changed on HN?


A few times I have submitted pages where to titles get changed in surprising ways. Take today:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/25/wifi_7_ee_qualcomm/

The banner headline is "The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not" - that is the one I used.

The HTML is "The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming • The Register".<p>But it got changed to "EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs".<p>Any ideas why that happens?</h4> </div> </div> <hr> <div class="card"> <div class="card-header"> <span alt="ChrisArchitect - Accepted Answer" title="ChrisArchitect - Accepted Answer" class="ps-1 btn btn-success text-white">   👤 ChrisArchitect</span> <span class="text-success"> Accepted Answer ✓</span> </div> <div class="card-body text-start"> <h5>Because it doesn't describe enough about what the story is about<p>Also: post this question in the thread instead of starting a whole new one.</h4> </div> </div> <hr> <div class="card"> <div class="card-header"> 👤 beardyw </div> <div class="card-body text-start"> <h6>As an HN link <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641812">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641812</a></h6> </div> </div> <hr> <div class="card"> <div class="card-header"> 👤 mindcrime </div> <div class="card-body text-start"> <h6>There are a few things that happen automatically to titles (removing numbers at the beginning, adding [pdf] and [video] tags, etc.) but for the most part two things seem to hold:<p>1. There's a preference for using the original title (mostly) as is<p>2. BUT, ultimately it's up to the mods' discretion. If they don't like a particular title because it seems misleading or clickbaity, they will sometimes change it. Sometimes they'll even change the submitted link - for example, changing to a better source for the story.</h6> </div> </div> </div> <hr> </div> <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.2.3/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-kenU1KFdBIe4zVF0s0G1M5b4hcpxyD9F7jL+jjXkk+Q2h455rYXK/7HAuoJl+0I4" crossorigin="anonymous"></script> <!-- Default Statcounter code for hackerqa https://hackerqa.net --> <script type="text/javascript"> var sc_project=13078448; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="656d49db"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js" async></script> <noscript><div class="statcounter"><a title="Web Analytics Made Easy - Statcounter" href="https://statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img class="statcounter" src="https://c.statcounter.com/13078448/0/656d49db/1/" alt="Web Analytics Made Easy - Statcounter" referrerPolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade"></a></div></noscript> <!-- End of Statcounter Code --> </body> </html>