I believe Hacker News users would find more utility out of descriptive titles that let them know whether or not they are likely to want to read the article, rather than the copy the editor's title.
Generalizing that, I think it's a problem with the Reddit/Digg model of titles only (which HN followed), versus the Slashdot/Metafilter model of short blurbs. The former gives no space to explain why content would be of interest to HN, so is biased towards content where it's obvious from the headline, which in turn both favors fairly linkbaity things, and discourages most people from reading the /newest page at all (because you can't really tell much from it).
I've occasionally found longer articles where I think HN would be very interested in some of the discussion in a way that isn't obvious from the title, and might require 2 or 3 sentences to explain. I rarely submit those, though, because there's no good way to convey that.
Comments
I believe Hacker News users would find more utility out of descriptive titles that let them know whether or not they are likely to want to read the article, rather than the copy the editor's title.
Generalizing that, I think it's a problem with the Reddit/Digg model of titles only (which HN followed), versus the Slashdot/Metafilter model of short blurbs. The former gives no space to explain why content would be of interest to HN, so is biased towards content where it's obvious from the headline, which in turn both favors fairly linkbaity things, and discourages most people from reading the /newest page at all (because you can't really tell much from it).
I've occasionally found longer articles where I think HN would be very interested in some of the discussion in a way that isn't obvious from the title, and might require 2 or 3 sentences to explain. I rarely submit those, though, because there's no good way to convey that.