zlacker

It's more an opinion than linkbait; an opinion which gets tossed by the way side because it is found to be disagreeable. Do authors have no say in what they call their piece?

linkbait is, at least to me, more along the lines of "you'll never believe what these developers made" and this post is nothing of the sort.

>>meeste+(OP)
This is one of those squishy things that's hard to assess. For me, I would stop short of a title that would be unacceptable if you substituted a (private) person's name for the company/country/whatever mentioned. If it was "Susan has absolutely no idea how to ..." I would call it "over the top" myself, but I'm no moderator. The guidelines also discourage "gratuitous adjective[s]" in titles, of which "absolutely" applies.

> Do authors have no say in what they call their piece?

Absolutely. No one is asking smashcompany.com to change their title. But this isn't smashcompany.com either.

>>meeste+(OP)
Calling something linkbait doesn't mean that that thing is factually incorrect, or even a bad title. It just means it's a superstimulus for off-topic debate. HN isn't a magazine; it's a forum. What the articles get labelled isn't about being accurate, or even evocative; it's about eliciting productive discussion.

>>derefr+U2
Thank you for teaching me "superstimulus". That word pretty much captures my concerns with linkbait and the like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus