Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jrochkind1 1623 days ago
And yet the guidelines suggest you use "the original title":

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

I don't think that ends up being confusing even though "the original title" could mean HTML element or biggest heading on the page, it works out, we know what you mean. (I think it's usually the biggest visible heading on the page, rather than mostly invisible HTML title element).

Since the guidelines literally do say to usually, if there isn't a reason not to, use, or at least start with, the original title... I agree it would be helpful if the submit form had an option to pre-fill the "title" field with the original title scraped from the article, like reddit does. You can always edit it before submission, it's just a pre-filled convenience. Which is how reddit UI works.

I think this would be a convenience to those following the guidelines (which totally tell you to start with the original title!), plus perhaps increase compliance with the guidelines by making it the path of least resistance.

On the other hand, it may reasonably not be the highest priority for development, I know you have a backlog. But I don't follow the argument that it would be counter-productive or impossible.

1 comments

The bookmarklet fills the title field with the HTML document title.