• @[email protected]OP
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    181 month ago

    Appreciate it. I swear most news sites will change a title 3, 4 times after publication these days. Must have some shit to do with SEO or something.

    • @grue
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      161 month ago

      Sounds to me like either:

      • Rule 4 should be rescinded
      • The link should always be to a timestamped archived version so that the title remains consistent
      • A bot should be created that verifies that the title was accurate at the time of posting
      • Some kind of Lemmy functionality should be created that automatically polls and updates the post title when the article title changes.
      • @[email protected]OP
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        131 month ago

        Rule 4 definitely shouldn’t be rescinded, there would be way too much editorializing of titles to fit the posters narrative (because let’s be real, >50% of users don’t open the article, at least not at first). It definitely needs to stay in a true news community.

        A timestamped archive version would be nice but you then end up taking away direct traffic from legitimate websites- the same problem as the AMP link I unfortunately had to use above. No traffic, no survival. (Granted I will happily post an archive link when content is paywalled; but most other sites do still need that traffic.)

        your options 3 and 4 could work fine- 3 just seems like spam and you’ll get people hating it like the MBFC bot, and 4 already partially exists- in the form of the link tagline that appears under the post when you actually open it. Warning users about noncompliance and letting them decide if they care enough to change it or not is probably fine enough for now.

        • @grue
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          121 month ago

          I just feel like forcing people to babysit their posts when it isn’t their fault that the news outlet changed the title out from under them might discourage posting.

          • @Ersatz86
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            51 month ago

            The preceding discourse was civilized and adult, and I am a better person for having witnessed it. Well done all.

          • @[email protected]OP
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            21 month ago

            Ehh, I can definitely see it being discouraging to some, but most people who post in the first place tend to be active enough to respond to a gentle reminder mod ping like Jeff did above. I find that very reasonable. Editing only takes a few seconds.

    • Chozo
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      11 month ago

      Lots of sites will do A/B testing with their headlines/thumbnails. Some users will see version A, some will see version B. After X amount of time, whichever version saw the most traffic becomes the “final” version which all users will see. I imagine this was a similar situation.