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[New Rule discussion] No Editorializing Article Titles. The original title of the article must be used. (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Edit: This rule seems to be much more nuanced and requires more thought than we had put in, please continue to discuss below.

It is NOT in effect at this time but highly recommend for regional subreddits at least.

~~The above rule has been added to the instance and will be enforced instance wide.~~ This rule is very common within most existing communities where news articles are shared and avoids sensationalizing the story or attempts at steering discussion by the user posting the article.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

We can probably live with it. Aside from some of the corner cases some have highlighted:

How different is the title from the first paragraph of the content of the post in terms of sensationalisation/steering? They're both displayed in the feed, one is bolder and bigger but they're both fairly prominent. I think providing opinion can be essential. Especially if it's not a news community. If that's alright in the body, then why not the title?
There's another way to deal with this. Let the community up/down vote the posts. Last week someone did some serious title gore on [email protected]. I reposted it with a title I felt was more appropriate and commented with a link to it in the original post. The original post got downvoted and the discussion shifted to the other one. Maybe this could be a self-correcting mechanism. 🤷

I don't know, I'm just thinking here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Good input thank you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh just thought of another corner case - sometimes the news article title is garbage and the post title can be used to fix it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah. I've seen some like that, but really at that point I would look for another source, or make it clear that it's editorialized title.

I think something to consider really with all rules is there's always wiggle room and edge cases. With every rule, to cover all those edge cases, it would get so convoluted and long that nobody would read it.

Perhaps for the communities that see this kind of rule as appropriate, it should be more so "Avoid editorializing Article Titles"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yup. Some rules don't have many corner cases. E.g. no bigotry. The more corner cases there are the fuzzier it gets and the more it drifts towards a recommendation than a hard rule. Some of those corner cases could be filtered by context. Many corner cases might not be relevant in a news community for example. In such a context a rule instead of recommendation might be appropriate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What's your thoughts on instance wide recommendation: "Avoid editorializing Article Titles" instead of having it as a rule?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That probably makes sense as a general recommendation.