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"strict about the title submission matching"

Is this the case?

I thought the one of the explicit rules was to remove "Insert number ways/apps to increase productivity" and similar enumerations from titles. I also thought there was a general rule of thumb to remove hyperbole?



Well there was the case of one of the original airbnb scandal submissions [1] having it's title changed from:

"AirBnB: Crimes committed against a host"

to:

"Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned"

The rational at the time was that the change was done since the original title didn't match that of the linked blog post -- see pg's comment[2]. The counterargument being that the original title helped increase awareness of an important story that would have been harder to accomplish with the generic title.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811080

[2]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814681


So then why do the guidelines say

You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it.


"AirBnB: Crimes committed against a host"

Is spin.

It drives up links due to an emotional reaction. If your linking to a post called 'lost sheep' and you could change it to 'efficient distributed counting' because that's more descriptive and without spin. But, 'lost sheep (distributed counting)' is more in the spirit of HN IMO.




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