HN has some heuristics to reduce hyperbole in submissions which occasionally backfire amusingly.

▲ mort96 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah it's a huge mistake IMO. I see it fucking up titles so frequently, and it flies in the face of the "do not editorialise titles" rule:

    [...] please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

It is much worse, I think, to regularly drastically change the meaning of a title automatically until a moderator happens to notice to change it back, than to allow the occasional somewhat exaggerated original post title.

As it stands, the HN title suggests that Raymond thinks the C++ 'try' keyword is a poor imitation of some other language's 'try'. In reality, the post is about a way to mimic Java's 'finally' in C++, which the original title clearly (if humorously) encapsulates. Raymond's words have been misrepresented here for over 4 hours at this point. I do not understand how this is an acceptable trade-off.

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mcny 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Personally, I would rather we have a lower bar for killing submissions quickly with maybe five or ten flags and less automated editorializing of titles.

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rramadass an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You can always contact hn@ycombinator.com to point out errors of this nature and have it corrected by one of the mods.

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mort96 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It has been up with the incorrect title for over 7 hours now. That's most of the Hacker News front-page lifecycle. The system for correcting bad automatic editorialisation clearly isn't working well enough.

	▲	rramadass 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, come on man! These are trivial bugs. Whoever noticed it first should have sent the email to the mods. I did it before i posted my previous comment and i now see that the title has been changed appropriately.

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UncleMeat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

A better approach would be to not so aggressively modify headlines.

Relying on somebody to detect the error, email the mods (significant friction), and then hope the mods act (after discussion has already been skewed) is not really a great solution.

▲ tux3 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's rare to see the mangling heuristics improve a title these days. There was a specific type of clickbait title that was overused at the time, so a rule was created. And now that the original problem has passed, we're stuck with it.

▲ pjmlp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You have a few minutes to change the title after the submission, I do it all the time.