zlacker

That title is over the top, so we replaced it with the much more neutral first sentence of the article.

>>dang+(OP)
I'm looking forward to seeing "over the top" added to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>>dang+(OP)
yeah, agreed with Candelabra - that title got lots of upvotes and was what it was

>>dang+(OP)
I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary. Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible. After all, why can't developers highlight the aspect of the article that would be of most interest to the readership of HN? But then, suddenly, an exception is made, based on wholly subjective criteria. How do you define "over the top"? Have you tried to get an Alexa app certified? Do you understand how bad the situation is?

I'm in favor of flexibility regarding the titles, and if HN supported such flexibility, then your decision in this case would seem less arbitrary. But given the rigidness applied at other times, this seems like an odd exception.

I'll point out that the current title does not come close to expressing the level of frustration that developers are currently feeling regarding the Alexa app store. Shouldn't the title give some indication about the real conflict?

>>lkrubn+w4
I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary.

It isn't, really. Editorialized titles tilt the balance in an opinionated way.

Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible.

For more detail, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877460.

Or, you can write a blog post commenting on that story, and post the blog entry to HN.

>>wglb+B6
You don't understand what you are talking about. HN doesn't have a rule against blog posts with editorialized titles, instead, HN has a rule saying that the people who submit articles to HN can not editorialize the titles. Basically, the rule is that the title on HN should be exactly the same as the title of the blog post. Except here, Dang is breaking that rule. The initial title of this submission on HN was exactly the same as the blog post. But Dang is objecting to the title of the blog post. That is why Dang's actions seem arbitrary: Dang has decided to break HN's normal rules. And why? Because of a feeling that the blog post had a title that was "over the top".

Have you read the comment that Dang makes at the URL that you just posted? Dang says "Please don't editorialize the titles of stories you submit here." And yet, here Dang is editorializing the title of the story submitted here.

>>dang+(OP)
this isn't OK. It's not HN's place to change the title because they disagree with it, or because it's harsh. If the original article changed the title, then there would be justification. But they didn't, so HN has no business injecting their editorialization into it.

>>dang+(OP)
The original title is correct in the literal sense - it is not an embellishment. There is ample evidence to support this assertion, and all of it is accessible in the Amazon Developer Forums. If you would like to make the claim that the OP is editorializing, the burden of proof is on you to show that Amazon does understand how to properly run this app store. Good luck with that, though.

Put the original title back.

>>dang+(OP)
The first sentence of the article is, "Amazon is relatively new to the job of running an app store, and some of their mistakes are either hilarious or infuriating, depending on how much money you’ve lost trying to deal with them."

The decision to switch the submission title away from the article's actual title is unjustified. The decision to switch it to a selective edit of the article's first sentence is even worse.

>>dang+(OP)
There's nothing neutral about this -- the original title accurately described the posts content (IE: they were infuriated at amazon). The new title doesn't reflect that at all -- you could imagine all sorts of alternate ways the article could go. "Amazon is new to running app stores" could be a profile of how amazon has developed their app store, or it could be about the general challenges of companies starting an app store, etc. This new title is impressively vague as to what the article is actually about, it tells me nothing. The original title was obviously about some people that were very upset about amazon's policies. The outrage was an important part of the title! The point of the article is that people are upset. If you take that out, you're just obfuscating things.

>>lkrubn+be
> You don't understand what you are talking about.

Please don't address a fellow user this way.

> Basically, the rule is that the title on HN should be exactly the same as the title of the blog post.

That's mistaken. The actual rule is to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Had you known that, you'd have known that we were upholding the rule, not breaking it. It's standard practice, when a title breaks the HN guidelines, to replace it with neutral, representative language from the article.

Does that mean we get every edit right? Of course not, but if you're going to object, please do so on the basis of what the guidelines actually say.

>>colinm+W2
The problem is that such titles routinely get upvotes, presumably because of some reflex they trigger in the brain. If we want to have a site that gratifies intellectual curiosity—which we do—we have no choice but to counteract them. That's a fundamental principle of this place.