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by slater 1611 days ago
Mods frequently rewrite submitted titles, either cos it's not the same title used in the article, or because there's a better wording for the HN crowd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Check dang's (HN mod) comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

1 comments

This title edit was not for an article, which is what confused me.

A user submit a self post, a rant basically which got popular, and the title was edited hours later.

It's totally ordinary for a post to go front-page and attract hundreds of comments on the basis of a title that's later deemed too interesting/editorialized/whatever, and you later see some dry uninformative title like "Google account security" or whatever it was occupying a top slot.

I can't say I've noticed it often before for text posts, but I do generally think this pattern of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted is pretty silly in general.

It's just wrong to change the title of a self post imho.

Without making it publicly known at least... you're changing what the poster intended to say.

Editing sensationalised headlines back to sanity makes perfect sense though.