6 ms·
HN title is not good. Original title is "U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row, Reflecting Rising Drug Overdoses, Suicides." The comparison is bet
by tntn 7y ago
HN title is not good. Original title is "U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row, Reflecting Rising Drug Overdoses, Suicides."
The comparison is between the last three years and 1915-1918, but the Spanish flu was just getting going in 1918.
EDIT: folks just arriving, the HN title has changed since I commented. It previously said "worst trend since Spanish flu," or something.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoThe title is fine, and reflects the factual subtitle immediately below the headline. There is no requirement to post the article headline as-is on HN.
- tntn 7y agoBut it doesn't reflect the factual subtitle. The title here says 1918, but the true trend is 1915-1918, which had a bit of a war as well. > There is no requirement to post the article headline as-is on HN. There is. From the guidelines: > Otherwise [i.e. not excessive clickbait] please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoApologies, you're correct. I think focusing on the year or years will bury the lede in any case.
- trentlott 7y agoIt is commonly known as "the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic" It's a title, not a series of facts
- spanxx 7y ago> Spanish flu of 1918 It was not Spanish. It's origins come from the battlefields of WWI.
- RmDen 7y agoEveryone knows it as the Spanish flu.. it's called like that because the Spanish newspapers didn't censor these deaths like the other countries that were busy with World War I
- derefr 7y agoHawaiian pizza does not come from Hawaii, and yet that is still its proper name (in English, at least.)
- tntn 7y agoNext you're probably going to tell me about French fries, right?
- simonh 7y agoFreedom Fries
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dang 7y agoThe submitted title was "Drop in US life expectancy trend not seen since 1918 influenza epidemic". A moderator changed it because it broke the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Submitters: Cherry-picking a detail from an article is editorializing, so please don't do that. If you want to say what you think is important about the topic, please do so in a comment, where your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20title%20level%20playing%20field https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...