[tokenadult]

Please submit Wikipedia articles, if at all, with their original article titles. It's bad enough to have submissions of most articles from the Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Make Stuff Up In (can you tell I was just editing Wikipedia this evening, trying to fix problems), but worse when Hacker News guidelines are ignored to submit a Wikipedia article with a linkbait title. There are a few sources for this article (which is good) but there isn't much information about the article topic even from those.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, by the way. Thanks for the kind submission, and don't mind my objection to the title not being the original article title.

AFTER EDIT: After all, I read the other comments here before I posted my comment, and it's not even clear that a "secret think tank" is really what the source of the cryptic messages is. That's reason enough to change the title of the submission here.

[tzs]

Personally, I'd rather see a useful title on Wikipedia submissions (I'm not saying the particular title chosen in this case was useful).

For submissions of magazine or blog articles, the original title policy makes sense usually, because magazine and blog authors or editors choose titles designed to catch the reader's interest.

Wikipedia titles are more names than titles. They are meant to allow people who are already looking for information on the thing in the title. When a Wikipedia article is submitted with the Wikipedia title, there is usually nothing that tells me why I might find it interesting.

I'd like to see HN allow submitters to include a one line statement saying what is interesting about the submission.

[tptacek]

Stories are community property; the first person to submit a story doesn't "own" it, and shouldn't have a special right to editorialize the submission.

[tzs]

Can't there be a sensible middle ground between slavishly copying the title from the source and editorializing?

Consider this video of Alan Kay's Turing Award lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymF94cFfzUQ&list=PLn0nrSd4xjj...

The title is "Turing Award Lecture". Is it really editorializing if it were to be submitted as "Alan Kay Delivers His Turing Award Lecture"?

[tptacek]

No, it's not. But that's not how the feature would actually end up getting used, is it? If you could design a simple feature that would resist abuses, 'pg would probably consider it.

[tzs]

How about allowing the submitter to optionally add a one line explanation if he thinks the title is not clear?

[captainmuon]

Its not so much about editorializing, but rather putting into context.

If e.g. amazon.com is down, that may be news. But a link with the title "Amazon" doesn't convey any information. People will wonder why the OP posted that link.

If the focus is on something on the page, not the page itself, you have to reflect it in the title. Maybe the OP doesn't want to post a trivial tech article, but wants to share that the article has a offensive image next to it.

Maybe the point the OP wants to make is opposite, or tangential to the point of the article. There was a wierd rant from one of the Gnome developers some time ago. I would never have upvoted the page by itself, as it was badly written, and I disagree with its contents. But the given title, which was basically "look, Gnome dev lost his marbles", lifted the post to a meta level, on which I gladly upvoted and shared it.

The current way to do the above is to post a stub on your blog, and link to that, although it is also offically discouraged. I personally think, when it is possible to do something while jumping through hoops, it should just be allowed to do the same thing without the hoops - no one should have to waste time to write a redirection article.

[captainmuon]

Maybe the OP should post a short comment

    Title: *the title I chose*

and people would upvote it customarily so that it floats to the top.

[maaku]

Because Cicada 3301 is so much clearer a description.

[cdmoyer]

I don't begrudge the rules here about titles, but I'm glad it was broken here, since that I clicked and read. Interesting stuff.

Makes me miss Perplex City.