Thanks! This is just what I was hoping to hear and presages very well for the future of HN!
Here's an example that I've observed a few times... And I'd love to know what is actually going on in these cases...
I often submit articles with a slightly tweaked title. Eventually, a mod (you, I guess!) gets a'fixing and the title is fixed to be exactly the one on swombat.com (the rationale for that is slightly dubious seeing as I'm both the writer and the submitter in some of those cases, but let's pass on that!). What I've noticed several times is that at the same time as the title being fixed, the article suddenly dropped 10 or sometimes many more places...
It's easy to interpret that as "moderator didn't like my article!"... But what is it really?
I don't remember any specific examples, but there are different sorts of moderation decisions we make, and it's not uncommon to make more than one of them at once. If you want to discuss specific examples, email me.
Also, I'm going to be the head moderator for a while, but not the only moderator. I'll answer the questions, but not necessarily do everything.
Title changes are a topic unto themselves and we'll probably have a dedicated discussion about them. We're not going to change the policy; the policy has far, far more benefit than cost for HN. The trouble is that the costs are visible ("hey who changed my title") while the benefits are all just taken for granted. With that kind of accounting, anything will seem bad.
What we can do is have a way for title changes to show up for users who want to know about them.
We often combine a title and subtitle for this reason. What we strive not to do is make stuff up. The key to a good HN title change is that it is made out of pieces already there: doc, h1, and h2 elements, mostly; or the first sentence of the story, if necessary. If the original title is misleading or linkbait, that is how we change it. But if the original title isn't misleading or linkbait, we don't change it at all.
Here's an example that I've observed a few times... And I'd love to know what is actually going on in these cases...
I often submit articles with a slightly tweaked title. Eventually, a mod (you, I guess!) gets a'fixing and the title is fixed to be exactly the one on swombat.com (the rationale for that is slightly dubious seeing as I'm both the writer and the submitter in some of those cases, but let's pass on that!). What I've noticed several times is that at the same time as the title being fixed, the article suddenly dropped 10 or sometimes many more places...
It's easy to interpret that as "moderator didn't like my article!"... But what is it really?