[dang]

You probably have that perception because cases that you dislike stand out like sore thumbs, while all the other title edits escape notice. If you think about it, that pretty well guarantees the feeling "it seems to be applied with little regards for its usefulness"—because all the "useful" edits are by definition excluded.

You can use petercooper's title edit tracker to see some of them: https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/. It doesn't show all of them, and it doesn't distinguish between edits by submitters and edits by mods. Probably we should just publish the official list—I feel like title editing is the most consistent and easily defensible thing we do.

[andybak]

Thanks for the reply.

What do you feel would be the harm if the policy was modified to

> "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait or lacks sufficient context; don't editorialize."

It just seems like there's frequently times when the original title is completely baffling out of situ.

[dang]

The issue there is that sometimes a little bafflement is a good thing. Not too much, not too often, but enough to make readers work a little: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... It slows the mind down and makes it engage a bit in figuring-things-out mode, which is good for curiosity. I think it's a valuable mechanism for interrupting the internet reflex brain, with its rapid reactions to literally everything, that mostly governs us online.