Daily Tildes discussion - title editing
Pretty straightforward topic today, but I think it's worth discussing briefly at least. I'm able to edit users' titles now (and the edit will be logged in the Topic Log in the sidebar). In the future, this ability will probably also be extended to others, both allowing users to edit their own titles, as well as giving others the ability to do it (will probably be tied into the trust system).
So the question is: when should titles be edited? It's nice for me to be able to fix typos or other mistakes, remove spoilers if that comes up, and also remove (or at least reduce) editorialization when that's an issue. Are there any other cases where I should (or shouldn't) edit titles?
Along with all of the other docs that need to be written, maybe a sort of "what makes a good title?" section in the submission guidelines would be good as well, so if you have any thoughts on that please feel free to post them.
We have talked about this before but just for the sake of kicking the discussion off:
Try not to be overly strict like Hacker News and some subreddits are when it comes to "original titles" of articles. Being so insanely anal about rules like that, to the point where important context is removed and click-bait/sensationalized titles are kept, is incredibly counter productive to promoting quality discussions.
Like many other things on this site, editing titles is likely going to require common sense and maintaining a careful balancing act, IMO.
Yes, when the source is a news outlet. And in the opposite extreme, sometimes the original title is corporate press release PR-speak and obfuscating the meat of an article, especially if it potentially reflects badly on the company. So sometimes a bit of editorialization can combat this.
In either case, I agree we should not follow the Hacker News style moderation of titles, which I've seen fail in both types of cases. On Tildes, we should be fighting both extremes: both overly sensationalized titles and obfuscated PR-speak titles.
This is a little off-topic, because it's more to do with title requirements than with the editing process, but there seem to be four main cases that you would want to avoid with how titles are to be submitted:
On a slightly unrelated note, I also think that whatever rules are put in place for titles should be site-wide, and absolutely not group-specific. The criteria should also be objective enough that certain subgroups are not able to post warped titles that would be popular with people who already think similarly to them but are ultimately a misrepresentation (this would be especially likely to happen in subgroups based around a certain political stance or ideology).
There's also other issues about titles changing. For example, I know Ars Technica uses an automatic system for A/B testing titles on articles. Two different ones are served randomly to users for the first, say, 15 minutes. Whatever one wins out in most clicks stays after that. You'll sometimes see people complain in their comment section about titles changing or being weird otherwise because they don't know about the system.
Discourse (forum software) has trust based system, which in the default configuration, allows any user to eventually earn a trust level where they can edit any title of any post. It works, with caveats: not everyone who gets this power realizes they have it; there needs to be a system in place for dealing with abuse of this power.
The trust system in Discourse works like this:
** Regulars have title and re-categorization rights for basically all topics.
** A history of all edits is kept, and most edits (ie unless specifically hidden by a mod) are open to public inspection.
** The creator of a post is notified of all edits someone else makes.
** Leader can not see moderation flags or do things like ban users.
** Leaders can edit posts and close topics.
It's not a trust model that I think is 100% right for Tildes goal, but it is a close fit.
Edit: Here's Discourse explaining trust levels:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-do-user-trust-levels-do/4924
I haven't seen this crop up here yet, but it might be nice to edit any, er, overly passionate/enthusiastic titles that are in all caps so that they're not in all caps.
I Also Really Dislike When Article Titles Are Written Like This, Too!
(instead of only capitalized proper nouns, but maybe that's just me?)
I think German capitalization rules would give you a brain aneurysm then... (it's proper grammar to capitalize ALL nouns)
Some subreddit CSS themes force this kind of capitalization! Drives me crazy.
You don't like people using Title Case for... umm... titles?
That's not title case... it's just capitalizing every first letter, which many sites do for some stupid reason. In proper title case, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions do not get capitalized unless they are the first word of the sentence.
I understand that distinction. I didn't realise you were making that distinction.
Fair enough... especially considering the example I used only had one preposition (like). In any case, no I am generally not a fan of title case since it makes headlines much harder to read, IMO, especially since it is often applied poorly and incredibly inconsistently. Sentence case, where only the first letter of the first word and proper nouns are capitalized is significantly easier to read.
There was a Medium article from John Saito (UX Writer at Dropbox and formerly YouTube/Google) published a few years ago that summed up my feelings between the two pretty much exactly: https://medium.com/@jsaito/making-a-case-for-letter-case-19d09f653c98
As the default option, the title of a link post should be the title of the article or item being linked. If and only if this title doesn't accurately represent the article's contents, another option could be considered. As the first back-up option, consider using the lede of the article. As a secondary back-up option, a representative quote from the body of the article could be used.
Titles should never include the poster's opinion. If the poster wants to opine about the article they're posting, they should do it in the comments like everyone else.
Of course, titles on text posts don't have to follow these guidelines!
Some other minor formatting issues:
ALL CAPS should be avoided where possible (which is pretty much all the time).
Titles shouldn't really need "tags", like "[News]" or "[Ask]" or "[Meta]" or such things. If it's not clear from the title itself whether this is a news article or a question or a meta discussion (or whatever), then the title isn't good enough: change it. EDIT: Duh. I forgot: we're not on Reddit. Tildes has actual tags. Even more reason not to put tags in titles!
Titles should be of reasonable length. One sentence is enough. Avoid paragraph-long titles. It's just a brief introduction, not a whole essay.
What if it's a blog/news post with a ridiculously long title?
News posts don't usually have ridiculously long titles. For blogs, just extract a relevant section of the title that describes the blog entry.
I don't think that mentioning a title should be changed in the comment section should be so much proper etiquette. It should be more of a report kind of thing. Or just like you said, have users that are able to do it that are trustworthy. When it gets mentioned in the comment section of a post it kind of derails everything.
I can definitely see how meta-discussions can be annoying, especially at this early stage of the site where they are often more prevalent than actual discussions on the articles/topics themselves. However, eventually those sort of meta-discussions will likely be tagged (so they can be filtered out should users desire not to see them) or perhaps even relegated to meta-specific mirrors for each group/topic.
IMO they do add value from a moderation policy building and feedback perspective though, so shouldn't be strictly forbidden, especially at this early stage before any real policy is even in place yet.
I more so meant pointing things out in the comment section of a thread can kind of derail them. Recently there was a post in news where I pointed out the title was a little misleading and it kind of derailed the entire conversation and I felt bad. I feel like if it would have been handled outside of the comment section it might not have derailed things so much.
Being able to tag them so they can be filtered out would be ideal. And tagging them would make it so a moderator could be notified to check it out.
I see... even still, I think comment tags like 'off-topic' and 'meta' (once comment tags are re-implemented) can help prevent that total derailing effect since people who only want to see "on-topic" comments can filter out the rest. But preventing people from making those sorts of critical or meta-comments at all or requiring they move them to somewhere else (like a meta-community) means they are often stripped of needed context and a lot less likely to occur organically, which isn't a good thing either IMO.
We're saying the same thing in a different way. I feel like being able to tag them would solve it.
Actually you & @cfabbro are saying different things:
You want to be able to report posts so you don't have to make off-topic comments about post titles.
cfabbro says that tagging comments will allow those off-topic comments to be hidden.
You're trying to prevent off-topic comments, while cfabbro says off-topic comments can be filtered.
Of course, that's all in the future: for now, we can't report posts or filter comments (but both these features are planned).
No.... Once he mentioned tagging I shifted and said that would be ideal and the way to go because it makes more sense. Read the entire conversation we had in the order we had it. My whole point was being able to keep it from derailing the conversation. And I was spit balling how it could possobly be done, once he mentioned tagging that made the most sense so I agreed. Tagging them would allow you to filter them out which would solve the problem... and you could even tie in notifications to it if you wanted.
Did you edit in the last sentence about tagging after making the initial comment? I think that may be where the confusion is coming from since I might have been replying before it was made... either that or I'm an idiot and for some reason just missed that part of your comment. ;)
Regardless, yeah I think we largely agree.
No I mentioned tagging being ideal initially. I did edit it though to add the notification sentence.
Ah okay... I'm just a piss poor reader when I'm in a rush then. Sorry about that. :P
I think there might be some situations where it's desirable to add the year to (the end of?) the title. Like, if ~news isn't going to have a Reddit-esque published-in-the-last-thirty-days requirement, it could be worthwhile to add, you know, (2016) to the end of the title of things more than, say, three or six or whatever months old, since expecially on mobile a lot of sites' dates/bylines aren't obvious or in some cases even visible. I can definitely think of cases where things that are technically "olds" have become relevant to "news" again, but it'd be extremely helpful to make clear that the article or whatever is, indeed, "olds".
Also I imagine ~music might eventually want a similar policy, especially for live performances. Like, "Blind Guardian - The Bard's Song - Live at Wacken 720p". Okay, great, that narrows it down to one of... six? seven? performances over the years, lol. If someone wants to post a live Nightwish video,
crankyopinionated fans who are at work and can't view the video but still want to have Tarja vs. Anette vs. Floorargumentsdiscussions ought to be able to do so easily...I think having much of that information (date, bitrate, video length, etc) in the titles will be largely redundant once the meta-data scrapers and subject database API calls are up and running but until such time, it might not be such a bad idea to include some of that information in the titles or tags for now.
Definitely, at least for now it would be a nice touch.
But on the other hand, I don't necessarily keep up to date with every news story. So a year from now some story might interest me and I may be inclined to believe it is very recent if I've never heard of it. It'd be nice to know right off the bat that the article was many months old already.
Maybe when a title is edited, there could be a tag added to show it was edited? That would account for the only negative aspect I can see in editing titles, which is people editing their title after a debate or discussion hasn't gone their way. The tag could maybe only apply to titles edited 1hr after posting, or it may just be obvious when a title edit was to fix a typo/spelling.
Any title and tag changes will be shown in the topic log (on the sidebar in the topic comment section) so is there any particular reason you think adding a tag would be necessary as well?
Where exactly is the topic log located? I can't seem to find it.
It only shows up if there's any entries in it (meaning the topic has had its tags changed, its title edited, locked/unlocked, or moved to a different group). I just edited this topic's title and then edited it back, so now you should be able to see it in the sidebar of this one.
Hey there it is! That's a good feature to have for transparency, thank you for adding it.
It's in the sidebar. However, it's only visible if there's something in the log: if a tag or a title has been edited. This means you won't see a Topic Log for most posts (where nothing has been edited). You should be able to see the Topic Log in this post, though.
Yes, I see it now. Thanks.
Didn't know about the topic log, so that settles my only issue. Thanks.
The common cases I can think of where titles might need to be edited are:
(1) is easily solved by allowing a user to edit a title within a certain timeframe of its submission - the real question lies in how to handle the other three. The way I'd be tempted to handle it would be to have titles only editable by moderators (aside from the previous sentence's suggestion), and users (or if necessary due to abuse, only reputable users) having a 'suggest a better title' option that alerts the mods. The mods should individually be able to ignore all suggestions for a thread if they've already checked it and agreed that the title is suitable (to prevent them being spammed for an already 'resolved' issue). Of note, this would be different to any 'report' system, which should be reserved for removing content that somehow breaks the site's rules.
I don't think this has been mentioned yet but I've seen one or two titles where the submitter put the news site in there (e.g. "Watch this cat play with a nuclear warhead | BBC memes") and since the site is always displayed right next to it anyways I think that should be removed.
This happens on Reddit a lot, because Reddit interrogates the website itself to find its "suggested title" for the article - and a lot of websites like to "suggest" that the website name be included in the title, and the poster just goes with the suggested title because it's easy. Have you seen this on Tildes? I don't think I've seen it here.
But I agree: titles don't need website names. If necessary, we could ask that people use a tag to identify the website they're posting from.
I have, here's an example, but it's not rampant or anything.
Why would you suggest the usage of a tag? To be able to filter out links to certain sites?
I remember that now. I barely noticed the "[WaPo]" tag - probably because it didn't really mean much to me at the time (what's a "wapo"? haha).
I agree: that's clutter which doesn't need to be in titles.
Actually, I was thinking to filter in: "show me posts only from these news sites".
It's not a serious suggestion, though. I don't want this feature. I just figured that, if people want to identify the website their post is from, it's less intrusive in a tag than in the title - and it's easier to redirect user behaviour than to stop it. Rather than telling people "No website tags in titles!", we tell them "Put your website tags in the tags." They feel like they're still sharing that information, and we keep the clutter out of the titles.
I'm gonna try to narrow the space rather than say what I think should be done.
I think title editing should always be acceptable when BOTH the OP and a mod (another mod if it's a modpost) consent to the changing of the title. This could be accomplished via a request format in which OP submits the proposed edit of the title along with the original title, and a mod just ok's it. Unfortunately...that requires mods.
That does not mean that there are not other acceptable cases. But I want to define a type of case which is pretty cut and dry and far from any fine lines. Starting your features in relatively safe places is the way to go--expand to the fine lines once the stable features are in place.
What if other people - such as moderators - believe a title should be edited but the OP doesn't agree?
I think moderators should win over OP, otherwise why bother with moderators? If OP doesn't like it, he can take his marbles and go play somewhere else.
That's a great question, and I could imagine a solid argument for either side.
I personally don't want to have that argument. I like to do something I learned as a science major when I had to do math. It's good to make estimates, but sometimes you shouldn't estimate the real value--you should estimate the bounds. I came up with a positive bound--it should absolutely be acceptable in a certain case which I gave. I could come up with a negative bound, too--if both the moderator AND OP agree that the title should not be changed, people complaining in the comments shouldn't get to win over that.
In math, that helps you figure out if values that you get are reasonable. It saves you time in checking--if it's way out of your bounds, you know it's wrong already.
In argument, that narrows the argument space and helps to keep people focused on the topic. I don't personally want to have the argument. But I am happy to "referee" if that makes sense.
You may like to look at positive and negative bounds, but situations where the moderators and OP agree aren't really a good test. A situation where the moderators and OP disagree about editing a title is not hypothetical: it will happen (possibly quite often). And whatever policies we propose must deal with this common situation.
It's not about a test--it's about whether a feature should be implemented at all. There is one very common type of case where the feature is solidly acceptable. That's enough to warrant creating the feature.
The other bound is to show that we need to have a way for posters and mods to communicate--the general public shouldn't be allowed to make these decisions and simply waiting for them to clamor and squabble about it doesn't seem like a wise choice.
It's a common strategy to help narrow down design decisions.
Could there be some sort of partial editing in some circumstances? If the OP wants to edit the title, but has not yet reached the "trust" needed to do so, maybe allow for them perform limited edits, such as only appending, adding new characters/words while striking through old ones, changing only formatting (capitalization, commas, etc.). The log is a good way to make any malicious title changes able to be called out, but it doesn't draw attention. It might be useful to have users able to edit titles in ways that are immediately obvious as edited while being read.
Great! Hate it when an article changes it's title and reddit can't fix it, causing the discussion to be different etc.
Perhaps after a given timeframe? Otherwise it could occur that people post clickbait-y content to get to the front page and then change the title to something inflammatory or self promotion
If there's any comment and that comment receives >1 votes, the title is locked.