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by dang 3549 days ago
The only part I disagree with you about is this:

> Dan could probably explain better than I.

Well done.

1 comments

You've said clickbait titles are against the rules in the past. What is your definition of a clickbait title, if it's not something vague and provocative that requires users to click through to figure out what the topic is?

(Note that I am talking purely about titles, not the articles behind them.)

Definitions are beyond me, but in this case I don't call it clickbait because it's the title given by the author to a text written from the heart, not to hoodwink or waylay. That makes it content, not bait tacked on later.

There's no need for every title to spell everything out. On the contrary, it serves reflection for readers to work a little, and 'reflective' (as opposed to 'reflexive') is the quality we most want here.

I wrote about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11979596 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161193 and a bunch of other places I can't find right now.

Most clickbait titles are attached by the author.

And in this case the title is written from the heart in the context of reddit, where it has "/r/KerbalSpaceProgram" automatically attached.

I cannot agree with categorizing the act of naming the company/brand as "spelling everything out". You have to work equally hard to understand this title with or without the name. It requires reading the post and putting in the same amount of mental effort. But the stripped-down version fails to serve the purpose of setting context. It might as well be a random ID.

The posts you linked both have titles that at least set context, whether or not some people wanted more information.