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Hey everyone. I've been considering if I should add this clause since November when I rebooted this community, but a post yesterday whose user-created title resulted in needless fighting in the comments finally made me organize my thoughts around why it should be implemented.
Keep in mind that there are no ex post facto rules in this community; anything posted before this isn't subject to this amendment. (Although if you've posted something, going back and making sure it conforms would make me very happy.) Before getting to my rationale, the Rule 3 extension is bolded below while verbosity getting axed is struck through:
"Posts should use high-quality sources, and posts about an article should have the same headline as that article. You may edit your post if the source rewrites the headline. For a rough idea, check out this list. ~~If it’s marked in red, it probably isn’t allowed; if it’s yellow, exercise caution.~~"
- User-created headlines are often far more ambiguous. As an example, "Trump voters are afraid that he would hold his promise to cut medicaid". Which Trump voters specifically? The real headline tells us: "4 in 10 Republicans worried Medicaid cuts would hurt their communities: Poll". As another example (of a screenshot of an article; I've considered for a long time if image posts are healthy for this community as it was the original intention to be articles-only, but I don't want to adjudicate that here): "Only thing worse than ICE agents..." The title is a joke instead of telling readers anything relevant unless they click on the image.
TL;DR: Weasel words and jokes obscuring the facts.
- User-created headlines often introduce unsourced claims which the moderators have to meticulously check the article for. For example, "Michigan Arab community, a majority of who voted for Trump in 2024, are outraged that the man who instituted a Muslim travel ban in his first term, has done so again in his second". Refer back to (1) for "Who in the Michigan Arab community?", but more importantly, "a majority of who voted for Trump in 2024" is never once substantiated. This violates Rule 2, yes, because the OP doesn't use a high-quality source for this explanation of why their post fits the LAMF criteria, and hence this one was removed. But now a moderator has to read through the entire article just to see if this claim is substantiated there.
TL;DR: Unsourced information is much harder to prove and remove.
- Original headlines usually have better grammar, spelling, and parseability. Refer to the example in (1), in which "are afraid that he would hold his promise to cut medicaid" is less parseable than "worried Medicaid cuts would hurt their communities". This is also a weird title on account of Trump already cutting Medicaid; this article is about them worrying about the effects of that.
TL;DR: Things written by professional writers are usually more readable.
- Trying to establish rules around what headlines should and shouldn't include (jokes, unverified claims, etc.) is Sisyphean nonsense – not just so the mods don't have to meticulously arbitrate each one but so that users don't feel like they're playing the Password Game.
TL;DR: Moderating custom titles against (1), (2), and (3) is a nightmare.
- The post body still exists for jokes, claims outside of the article for why this is relevant (provided you follow Rule 2 and source them), your thoughts on what's discussed, etc. We can let the people who want the color commentary go to the comments while letting people who want a useful link aggregator avoid interacting with them.
Because this removes the ability of the OP to explain relevance in the title, Rule 2 is rewritten slightly:
"If the reason your post meets Rule 1 isn't in the source, you must add a source in the post body (not the comments) to explain this."