[mbrubeck]

I agree. I've been a regular reader of the site for over six years (and a regular poster for 4.5 years) and I'm pretty sure this has gotten a lot worse in the last few years.

Headline-writing is very audience-specific. A headline that works fine in its original context (on a personal or company blog, for example) does not always work out of that context. In the early days, the "use original titles" guideline was much less rigidly enforced, and most users did a good job of tweaking titles to make them more informative and appropriate for the HN audience. When they failed, editors did a good job of fixing that.

Today it seems the rule is applied blindly and often detrimentally. And unlike, say, MetaFilter, where the moderators are visible and engaged with the community on questions of policy, the HN "editors" act invisibly and seem never to respond or engage with their readers. :(