It's one of those things that doesn't get noticed when it works well, which we hope is most of the time. That has an amusing side effect: the cases that people notice are the ones that they don't like—those stand out like sore thumbs—and this creates the feeling that the title edits are always annoying and wrong. Which is true, if you don't count any of the good cases!
Thus most of the comments about HN's title editing system (software + mods) are about how awful and obviously terrible it is, and comments like yours here are rarities.
In the end this is all priced in, so to speak, to HN's system. The main thing is that the front page be mostly free of misleading and/or linkbait titles and gimmicks. pg used to describe it like this: we want the front page of HN to look bookish. That is, it should look interesting to people who like to read, and look boring to people who don't.
It's an orange field of strange little holes in the ground. Some people would simply walk past and not wonder. Others, The Curious, would be compelled to stop and peer down one.
