Comment on [deleted]

jarfil@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• criitz@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This isn’t an article headline, it’s a discussion post. I’m not sure Betteridge’s law applies.

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• Gaywallet@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  As a community, can we please stop this behavior? This isn’t an article, but even if it was an article, rushing to be the first person to leave a “gotcha”-style message doesn’t encourage a conversation. If you have an issue with a headline, it takes a trivial amount of time to explain what, specifically about the headline could be improved or wording that is more relevant to content that the author is presenting. You can also easily start a conversation about why sensationalizing the headline is damaging to individuals. By just pointing at wikipedia, or an xkcd, or leaving a comment like this, we’re encouraging reddit and twitter style vapid interactions which consist of who can make the best joke or flame the person who posted it the soonest.

  This doesn’t promote a nice environment, when every article is met with “LAW OF HEADLINES, NO”. It’s exhausting to see. In most cases the person sharing the article isn’t who wrote the article, so they aren’t actually in control of writing it. Yes, they can choose new words to put into their post, but this platform auto-populates most links with the headline from the article, and also focusing on the headline draws attention away from the article itself and any useful or fruitful discussion that can happen as a result of discussing the content, rather than the often <.05% of the content of the article that the headline constitutes.

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  • jarfil@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This isn’t an article

    Precisely. I’d have expected that would’ve made the “/s” implicit… and I’d like to point out I did provide a reasoning (short, but still).

    By just pointing at wikipedia, or an xkcd, or leaving a comment like this, we’re encouraging reddit and twitter style vapid interactions which consist of who can make the best joke or flame the person who posted it the quickest.

    Once upon a time, my grandma told me an old joke:

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    A bunch of guys sit in a bar, and from time to time one shouts a number, then all start laughing. “35!”, and everyone laughs. “127!”, everyone laughs. A newcomer, after a while of looking at them perplexed, decides to ask what’s going on, so one of the guys tells him: “See, we all know each other for a long time, we’ve told the same jokes over and over, so we decided to just number them to save time”. The newcomer thinks for a while and says “That’s convenient… 178!”, and everyone falls silent. “That’s a new one”, whispers the guy.

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    Linking to Wikipedia or saying “XKCD 936”, is not (necessarily) a way to “make the best joke or flame”, it’s (also) a way of not repeating oneself for the thousandth time. XKCD 1053, and all that 🙄

    In most cases the person sharing the article isn’t who wrote the article, so they aren’t actually in control of writing it.

    The person who wrote the article, is in control though. A source’s bias, what did they decide to highlight, and how they decided to express it, is more often that not a good representation of an article’s content, as both content and title usually fall under the control of the same person (except some AB engagement testing shenanigans… which deserve to be pointed out on their own).

    However, I agree there might be a fine line between:

    • Criticizing the source
    • Criticizing the poster
    • Linking to a reference explanation

    …which sometimes might get lost in connotations. Should I edit it to add the “/s”?

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    • Gaywallet@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      To be clear this was not meant as a criticism of you, specifically. I’m simply asking that we collectively stop this kind of behavior in general on this instance, for the reasons I outlined. If there is still a desire to criticize, that we do so in a way that is not simply stating the ‘law of headlines; no’, as that’s something that I’ve seen happen on Beehaw dozens of times.

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      • jarfil@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Ah… then I agree. Although personally, a link to a “question headline article” already makes me less willing to even check a conversation, and there are some on the frontpage right now… I’ve only checked this one because it was not a link. Could the low effort comments, indicate a criticism of the article selection itself?

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