• Corroded@leminal.space
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    4 months ago

    Why not edit the title to be a little bit less clickbait?

    Maybe something like:

    Mark Kelly, A Possible Democratic Veep Pick, Just Changed His Position On Protecting the Right to Organize Act

    • Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      Then someone would complain that I changed the title, which is against the rules. There’s a picture of him, and the summary has his name.

      • Zaktor
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        4 months ago

        Just a note that Rule 1 in the sidebar says “if your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive”, so changing it is ok as long as it improves the information as the OP suggested. We’re luckily not constrained by the terrible titles chosen by news sites to boost clicks.

          • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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            4 months ago

            Which were terrible. My favorite was when a source capitalized the title, so anything you did would violate a rule and get it removed.

            • Ninmi
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              4 months ago

              I assume as the volume of links grow, the amount of work mods would have to do in vetting editorialized headlines grow as well as some people would like to inject in their own bias. You’d see this obnoxious editorialization from time to time in .ml in the past on articles concerning USA, for example.

              I’d just add the relevant info in angle brackets after the original headline, personally.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        And then the actual title of the article will be changed 2 hrs later by the actual news agency.

      • Corroded@leminal.space
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        4 months ago

        I haven’t seen a lot of people get upset about altered titles on Lemmy. I feel like there’s a general understanding that an accurate title is better.

        Some people cite the article’s original headline in the text below the submitted link.

      • Corroded@leminal.space
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        4 months ago

        It’s more targeted at the lemming who posted this. Considering people can edit post titles and add additional text to a link post there’s not really a risk in trying something more informative. They wouldn’t need to delete their post or match some ultra rigid formatting.

        I don’t have any faith in Huffington Post (or several other news outlets) deviating from clickbait. In this situation someone might not recognize the name or act and assume it’s irrelevant to them. I can see why they do it but I don’t like it.

          • Corroded@leminal.space
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            4 months ago

            Totally. I feel like that’s a bit of a holdover from Reddit is all and there’s usual some flexibility here so I’m saying it’s good when people utilize it.

            Personally I like altering the title, including the origina title in the text, and maybe a few other articles on the topic or to add context. It doesn’t take much effort on my part and I feel like it shows I’m not just dumping links and might engage in a conversation about it.

            • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I came to Reddit from Fark, where half the fun was making the headline funny, at least in context of the story. It was really hard for me to get used to the subreddits that insisted the headline be the original. It doesn’t bother me so much now, except I viscerally hate clickbait headlines.