[Mister_Snuggles]

I really wish posts like this, and posts that are just random Wikipedia articles, would have a paragraph (or at least a sentence) from the submitter.

Why is this interesting? For Wikipedia articles about people this is doubly important because the title is inevitably just the person's name - unless you already know who that person is there's no hint as to why they are significant.

[sweeneyrod]

Disagree. I like the way this system stops submitters giving their potentially half-baked opinions on articles, and adds an element of mystery to things.

[duxup]

I'm inclined to agree, tossing in the poster's spin tends to drive the topic, often to odd places rather than the actual thing.

At the same time links to pages without any context as to why leaves me wondering why I should be looking at this page. Particularly product pages that are not easy to parse what the point is sometimes.

[Paul-ish]

The selection of the article itself is sufficient to add spin.

[duxup]

I don't think I understand.

[Paul-ish]

Say Google makes a significant change to their ToS. If you link to the ToS, the title will be "Google ToS". So instead you are left with the option of linking to a Guardian/buzzfeed/wired blog post that is mostly fluff, doesn't include the actual ToS text in context, and has a hyperbolic headline. Which article you chose to post determines the spin.

[duxup]

I don't think just listing a product page or a ToS is "spin". Product pages my be there to talk up their product but we know that.

[Mister_Snuggles]

While I'm in favour of restricting editorializing, simply posting a link called "Firefox Developer Edition" (the title tag on the linked page) seems to only cause confusion[0][1].

The title of this has since been changed, which causes even more confusion since the comments I linked now make no sense to someone who never saw the original title. I'm not sure if the new title would violate the title guideline or not, but it's certainly a better choice than what was there before.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819179

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818856

[Paul-ish]

The title rule encourages blogspam and bad articles. For example if Google were to make a big change their ToS and you link to it, the title would be "Google ToS". This is confusing. So in instead you link to some crappy article with a better title about the same subject. Or not at all.