I would assume such changes come from a desire to be accurate. But accurate how? In what way? That depends on the purpose of the title.

As I see it, our differences of opinion on this topic stem largely from misunderstanding it. I think it's not at all clear what we're even talking about, so we wind up arguing about slightly different things and fail to come to a consensus.

I think that we need to really understand the purpose of these titles, and to also understand that different people mean different things by the word "title". In fact, I think we're talking about three distinct but related ideas: titles, names, and summaries.

A name is a word or phrase that identifies a thing. A name isn't necessarily descriptive and often has no more meaning than being a word or phrase denoting the thing it names. My name is Adam. That tells you very little about me. All you can do with that is to identify me.

A summary describes a thing. I am a software developer with a penchant for pedantry. That's a summary. It actually tells you something about my nature, which the name "Adam" does not.

A title is first and foremost a kind of name. Ideally, it's also a descriptive summary, though that's not required. As a name, the important thing is that it is as short and as unique as reasonable. That's more important that descriptiveness.

In my opinion, Hacker News links should not be titles, i.e. names, but rather short summaries. Using a title is fine, but only as long as it's also a good summary.

The point of the front page is to link to things that are new and fresh. Ideally, most people won't have seen most things, meaning few will be familiar with their names. A page of new names that nobody recognizes is pretty pointless. You might as well use randomly generated words for the links. Or numbers. Like item?id=8114336.

Instead of titles, I think links should be summaries. When they are summaries, they can provide some real information about the thing that is linked. That can be used to decide whether to invest time in clicking through. When a link is just a name, you have little information to base that decision on, so you have to click most of the links to know which are the interesting ones.

But, if all HN links are summaries, how will we know what to call the articles they link? Well, if the summary is interesting enough to want to talk about, you'll click the link and see the actual title. Names are unimportant on the HN front page. They only become useful in the comments, and by then you should have at least read the title of the article, if not the whole thing.

The original summary here was useful and information-packed without being too long: "Josh Bloch Fights a LIDAR Speeding Ticket (with Science)". I care that it's Josh Bloch. I care that he's using science, in court. I care that it's about LIDAR and not RADAR. The fact that it's Josh Bloch, and that he's using science to fight a ticket means he was probably wrongfully ticketed, implying weaknesses in LIDAR speed guns that I want to understand. I got all that from a good, short summary.

The new summary is just the title of the linked article, which in this case is mostly just a name: "The Lowdown on Lidar". So, it's about LIDAR generally? Or as opposed to RADAR? Given the use of "lowdown", it's probably it's about some stuff that isn't commonly known. Maybe. Or maybe it's a boring, entry-level article on range finding in general that happens to talk about LIDAR rather than RADAR or SONAR. The title tells me very little and is not helpful in deciding whether to click the link, though it is a good name that's short and easy to use when talking about the article. I enjoyed reading "The Lowdown on Lidar".

The most important and useful thing a main page link can do is to accurately and faithfully inform the reader about the contents of the link. Accurately naming the linked thing is neither important nor useful. That is especially not useful when the name given by the original author misrepresents the contents, as is sometimes the case.

Accuracy is important in general, but we must be clear about specifically which kind of accuracy matters most here.