If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
I'm sorry for any trouble I caused here. I have no affiliation with the company, but just came across this company/its post and thought "Interesting! I wonder what HN readers will think."
Not your fault -- the title you put on it wasn't unreasonable, it's just that tensions are running high and there is a tremendous amount of mistrust out there. I think dang's guidance is really good in general: by using the title on the piece, you let the piece speak for itself. And there's definitely a reason I didn't title the piece this way!
That's a really interesting observation. I was trying to figure out when the tenor of the comments was so hot (especially relative to the two previous times this piece has been discussed on HN), and it didn't occur to me the title may very well have played a role -- but on reading the comments here (and especially, the fixation on the number), that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for burying the thread; there was more heat than light on this one for sure!
Oh yes! - that's a whole other level to this. pg figured that out 15+ years ago*:
If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Excessive specificity has almost a hypnotic effect on the mind, and group effects compound that.
Thanks for explaining! For future reference: would it have been OK if the post had the same title, but I left the URL box empty and placed the URL in the Text box along with a few sentences for context?
Good question! The answer is no—text posts are actually penalized to prevent that scenario—they're downweighted by default, and don't have live links by default. From the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:
Q: How do I make a link in a text submission?
A: You can't. This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page. If you want to submit a link with comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment.
On HN, the idea is that submitters shouldn't have any special right to frame the story for others. They're welcome to express their opinion, of course, but it should be done in a comment, because then it's on a level playing field with everyone else's opinion.