[lgsilver]

You aren’t alone. I’ve noticed a major uptick in these types of editorial changes that remove or obscure the intent of the underlying content. They don’t seem to follow a consistent editorial standard or voice, and are having a noticeable effect on the quality of the HN UX.

[dang]

There's no uptick. The mod practices around titles haven't changed in many years.

It's also probably a lot more consistent than it seems. That doesn't translate into perception, though, because people tend to notice the ones that annoy them. I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23954907

[g42gregory]

Do we know who is doing these edits and why?

[dang]

It could be the submitter, the software, or the mods. For example, the submitter did this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29879165

but the mods did this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29879184

Peter's tool doesn't tend to pick up software edits because most of those happen on submission, which is before the tool picks them up.

[krapp]

Since you seem to be logging edit history internally, how about making that visible to users? There would be a lot less confusion and paranoia around if it were obvious when an edit was made and by whom.

[dang]

Alas, I think the odds are that there would be more, not less. Certainly there would be a lot more fodder for it. These things don't explain themselves, after all; we still have to do that, and it's a ton of work. It's also stressful—it's all public, and if you screw up in any way, you can easily generate more hostility and more work for yourself.

I think the current approach, in which we don't publish everything we do but are happy to answer specific questions when people ask them, is the right balance.

[floatingatoll]

You could ask the mods why directly about the pig heart article, if you’re seriously interested, using the footer contact link. I wouldn’t do this for every edit and expect a reply, but it seems like asking them to chime in here for a single case study would be simpler and more factual than guessing at reasoning, and I imagine they’re probably willing.