There was recently a link to a register[1] article covering a scientific study[2] where not just the title, but the whole URL got switched to the original study. Now, I'm not disputing that it probably would have been better to link to the article titled "Empathy among students in Engineering Programs" originally, but the Register article contained quite a bit of satire. It's title was "Engineers are cold and Dead inside".
The Register article contained slang and sarcasm aplenty, and most of the discussion revolved around that. When the URL changed, most of the comments suddenly became not only irrelevant, but incredibly confusing if you hadn't seen the originally linked register article.
So, I don't have a very strong opinion on article changes. But I'm pretty strongly against actually changing the URL. Yes, a lot of the time the submitted link is blogspam. But a lot of the time there's some added commentary or color, and people start discussing it. Changing the URL is like pulling the rug out from under the people who already commented. I know it's intended to elevate the content on the site, but it just ends up being kind of rude.
Well ideally URL changes are to get rid of blog spam, in the case that a site is doing a terrible job reporting and has less data. I'm okay with them usually.
But these nigh-automatic title changes, 90% of the time, are taking a title that had context added or explained the relevance to HN and reverting it to something generic and less useful.
I also find it irritating when people call everything "blog spam". Many blogs are fluff, but either we go with the votes or we don't. If a link to a blog article is posted and someone thinks it's "blog spam", they should post another link to the original content, if the original content is better, more informative, more complete, it will get voted up. If it doesn't, the "blog spam" was "better" content, as voted by the community, like everything else is supposed to be over here. There should be no need for the patronizing moderation.
If we don't trust the votes to select better content what are we using them for?
The problem isn't fluff, it's blogs that act like a broken copy of the original with chunks missing, providing no commentary either. The voting system isn't a very good solution: it requires the front page to be inundated in duplicate articles followed by people reading both versions and voting up the good one. And what if they already upvoted the spam blog because they liked the information it had and didn't know it was a cheap knockoff?
The voting system lets you compare different articles, but it doesn't let you compare two versions of the same article submitted at different points of a day.
Comments
There was recently a link to a register[1] article covering a scientific study[2] where not just the title, but the whole URL got switched to the original study. Now, I'm not disputing that it probably would have been better to link to the article titled "Empathy among students in Engineering Programs" originally, but the Register article contained quite a bit of satire. It's title was "Engineers are cold and Dead inside".
The Register article contained slang and sarcasm aplenty, and most of the discussion revolved around that. When the URL changed, most of the comments suddenly became not only irrelevant, but incredibly confusing if you hadn't seen the originally linked register article.
So, I don't have a very strong opinion on article changes. But I'm pretty strongly against actually changing the URL. Yes, a lot of the time the submitted link is blogspam. But a lot of the time there's some added commentary or color, and people start discussing it. Changing the URL is like pulling the rug out from under the people who already commented. I know it's intended to elevate the content on the site, but it just ends up being kind of rude.
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/21/engineers_cold_and_d...
[2] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03043797.2012.708...;
Well ideally URL changes are to get rid of blog spam, in the case that a site is doing a terrible job reporting and has less data. I'm okay with them usually.
But these nigh-automatic title changes, 90% of the time, are taking a title that had context added or explained the relevance to HN and reverting it to something generic and less useful.
I also find it irritating when people call everything "blog spam". Many blogs are fluff, but either we go with the votes or we don't. If a link to a blog article is posted and someone thinks it's "blog spam", they should post another link to the original content, if the original content is better, more informative, more complete, it will get voted up. If it doesn't, the "blog spam" was "better" content, as voted by the community, like everything else is supposed to be over here. There should be no need for the patronizing moderation.
If we don't trust the votes to select better content what are we using them for?
The problem isn't fluff, it's blogs that act like a broken copy of the original with chunks missing, providing no commentary either. The voting system isn't a very good solution: it requires the front page to be inundated in duplicate articles followed by people reading both versions and voting up the good one. And what if they already upvoted the spam blog because they liked the information it had and didn't know it was a cheap knockoff?
The voting system lets you compare different articles, but it doesn't let you compare two versions of the same article submitted at different points of a day.
I would be fine with the Register being blacklisted, personally. Never seen anything worthwhile on it.