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by ghastmaster 1618 days ago
The title should be changed to reflect the title used in the article. "Accurate VO2 Max for Zwift and Strava"

Especially considering the following:

> Physiology labs that are normally used for testing VO2 max cost upwards of $60,000 and are certainly not portable. They have sensors that measure the same things only on a much finer level.

2 comments

The person who wrote the article must've had a specific audience in mind, so they chose one title.

The person who posted the article here must've had HN's audience in mind, so they chose a different title.

Titles convey ultra-dense summary of the content, so there can be many titles appropriate for any given article. The purpose of the title is to attract _attention_ of the audience who the title-writer thinks would find it most interesting.

The reason someone writes an article, or posts in a forum, is to spread an idea, or a message, and have other like-minded people, or people who may find the info useful, read it. Exception: content written for commercial/monetary gains has no goal other than grabbing eyeballs, to make more money.

So, yes, it's okay to edit titles, but only if they're egregiously misleading, or inappropriate, or if there's a better title to convey the summary and attract the attention of folks in the said forum.

Context (as to why this request of yours triggered me): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25093563

The OP here chose to use a title with an astounding monetary figure in it. I was baited. I would not have read the article if it had the original title. Strict adherence to the guidelines would have saved me here.

Regarding your post, I am curious if "Google" was removed by yourself(and later changed your mind) or the moderators?

After reading through some of the context[1], I'm in favor of being consistent with de-clickbaiting titles. This title should be changed to "Accurate VO2 Max for Zwift and Strava" as it is a much better summary of the article (the article does mention beating $60k machinery, but does not seem to suggest being a portable replacement for that specific machinery like the title)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25093563 To summarize the contextual thread, the title of a post was de-clickbaited against the OP's intentions. In my opinion, for the better.

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