alt Hacker NewsWhen titles are changed, the intent as I understand it is to nudge discussion towards thoughtful exchange. Discussion is forever threatening to spin out of control towards flame wars and the moderators work hard to prevent that.
I think that if you want to understand why it might be helpful to change the title, consider how well "NVIDIA is full of shit" follows the HN comment guidelines.
I don't imagine you will agree with the title change no matter what, but I believe that's essentially the rationale. Note that the topic wasn't flagged, which if suppression of the author's ideas or protection of Nvidia were goals would have been more effective.
(FWIW I have plenty of issues with HN but how titles are handled isn't one of them.)
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I don't see how changing the title has encouraged thoughtful exchange when the top comments are talking about the change to the title. Seems better to let moderators do their job when there is an actual problem with thoughtful exchange instead of creating one.
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I agree with your explanation, but I think it's a hollow rationale. "Full of shit" is a bit aggressive and divisive, but the thesis is in the open and there is plenty of room to expand on it in the actual post. Whereas "Nvidia won" is actually just as divisive and in a way has more implied aggression (of a fait accompli), it's just cloaked in using less vulgar language.