The policy on source headline titles - is it realistic?

From time to time everyone has been disappointed in the title of a thread.

Many times it's because of sensationalistic flare, or obvious factual disconnect between what is represented by the title as opposed to the content. Other times they can be just plain offensive or trivial and off-topic.

I know moderators examine such things and, in the extreme cases, will impose a rewrite of the title - many doing it themselves without the posters extraneous input.

I have heard it said, time and time again, that the 'original' title as presented by the source is 'supposed' to be used. It is to this maxim that I address my concern.

When I create a thread, I want to indicate what the subject is and present the direction or inclination of my accompanying comments. I feel that by directly quoting the source title, I would not be serving the point of the thread. Especially since the 'source' may be guilty of the taking editorial liberties of which I don't approve.

Are we allowed to exercise our own preferred verbiage, or MUST we be constrained external editorial license? Should someone else be able to dictate what the thread title should be? Or have I missed some dialogs about this previously? I couldn't find this topic using the search function.



[edit on 2-7-2008 by Maxmars]

Given that the "headline title - same as source" policy only applies to the Breaking News forums, it would seem that the answers to your questions can be found in the Breaking News forum submission guidelines.

Headline: Please use the original story headline from your source. If the headline is biased or otherwise inappropriate, provide a descriptive headline that is accurate and reflects the article you're submitting. Submissions with inaccurate, biased or otherwise deceptive headlines may be removed.

* bold emphasis mine

The overall objective and focus being on headline Accuracy and that they Reflect the article being submitted.

[edit on 2-7-2008 by 12m8keall2c]

reply to post by 12m8keall2c


Ahhh. Thank you, I was unclear that the policy was limited to Breaking News.

Thank you for your help!