[JoshLedgard]

Everyone tests different titles. It's part of marketing.

I'll freely admit to:

1. Writing a best practices post on a timely subject to grab more attention. "How to create a good landing page" wouldn't do nearly as well.

2. Testing headlines to see what drives the most clicks. Although this one was my first try on Hacker News.

I'll bet over the next 6 months Apple changes the headlines on their landing pages as well.

[jack-r-abbit]

Maybe just my opinion, but I don't think HN submissions should be used to test which headlines get more clicks. (Wouldn't that pretty much fall into the "Link Bait" bucket?) The HN Guidelines[1] has some pretty clear, simple text on submission titles. It mostly boils down to "use the original title... unless a few of the mentioned cases exist".

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[glhaynes]

I wasn't clear: I'm not bothered by the headline, just by the comments being entirely dominated by discussion about it. Not that I'm helping. :) Thanks for the article!