I've hypothesized a few times that: when many people submit the same url, x>1 of them are very likely to submit the actual title of the article while people who editorialize will tend to do so uniquely. Because of this HN can rely on an algo to update the title.
I realize there there are moderators for HN and they are confirmed in some cases to have changed titles but I don't think this necessarily means they are responsible for all the title updates.
Well there is some evidence that people vote on the title only without reading the article, sometimes even commenting just on the title. So if you were really interested in maximizing karma you would put an outrageous title on it, get some rage-comments to force it to the front page and then the mods switch it to the real title. Not saying this has ever happened of course but it did strike me that blogs use link baitey titles, why not karma-baitey titles?
I have no concrete proof that this is happening, but it sure feels like it from time to time. It's not uncommon to see articles chart to the front page with provocative headlines that, upon clicking through, bear little resemblance to the headlines or body of the linked content.
Gut-level guesstimate, but the following titling strategies seem to work disproportionately well:
1) Pointed, rhetorical questions (as much as we all claim to hate them)
2) "How I..." titles (usually some legitimate merit to these posts, but if one were so inclined to game the system...)
3) Contrarian declaratives, usually about popular topics. (Hypothetical example: "Facebook is not a social network." This will generate a lot of blind upvotes, plus at least a few knee-jerk comments in opposition).
In fairness to HN, the content actually matters here. I can't say the same for a lot of the subreddits I browse, where blind upvoting based on title alone is a lot more rampant. It's pretty hard to crack the front page with lousy but well-clickbait-titled content here, though we've all seen it done before (and it seems to happen at least once a week).
I wouldn't say it's too much harder than reddit. The key is long form content.
Legitimate commentary will take longer to flow in, and allow for knee jerk / blind influence to last longer from original submission time.
IMO the beet would be a clickbait title for a long article that starts contrarion, but ends on a neutral note.
Rational/logical people will take less offense b/c they're more likely to read the neutral perspectives and others will blind vote/comment based on title and first couple of sentences of the article.
Perhaps, but I don't think the link titles should be changing at all unless it's clearly necessary. They should reflect the content as the original site intended it to be presented (where possible or acceptable), if they provided any metadata to describe it. That's what metadata is for after all.
There already is a "title" bar for submitting links which is fine, but I think the temptation to tweak and try to game for karma might make that more suitable as a byline.
I realize there there are moderators for HN and they are confirmed in some cases to have changed titles but I don't think this necessarily means they are responsible for all the title updates.