Yes, I appreciate that, and yes there is room for nuance. But I think you went too far in this case, meaning that the delta between the article title and the submission title was too large. For example, the word "useless" appears nowhere in the article abstract nor in the article body. That's a big delta.
I was starting to type out a longer explanation but I ran out of time - however, I probably would just be repeating things I've said many times before, for example here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - perhaps some of that would be helpful.
You're a fine HN contributor and obviously a genuine user and I hope I didn't come across as critical! From our side it's just standard HN moderation practice. The way we deal with titles has been stable for many years. It isn't entirely mechanical, there are many subtleties (back to the nuance thing) but the core rules have served the site really well. THe main thing we want to avoid is having the title field be a mini-genre where whoever makes the submission gets to put their spin on the article.
I was starting to type out a longer explanation but I ran out of time - however, I probably would just be repeating things I've said many times before, for example here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - perhaps some of that would be helpful.
You're a fine HN contributor and obviously a genuine user and I hope I didn't come across as critical! From our side it's just standard HN moderation practice. The way we deal with titles has been stable for many years. It isn't entirely mechanical, there are many subtleties (back to the nuance thing) but the core rules have served the site really well. THe main thing we want to avoid is having the title field be a mini-genre where whoever makes the submission gets to put their spin on the article.