"The HN title somewhat implies that Jefferson showed up to all the meetings this way; overly prepared. But the title of the original article states "Thomas Jefferson and preparing for meetings" which clearly does not convey that Jefferson was always like this."
Actually, the HN title does not in fact say that Jefferson prepared for all meetings like this. He clearly prepared for at least one meeting this way. And I wouldn't be surprised if this was not the only occasion where he was so prepared. But I'll grant you that perhaps using the plural of the word "meeting" instead of the singular was a tiny bit misleading.
"Furthermore in the article it is narrated one instance when Thomas Jefferson showed up prepared, which does not constitute enough evidence to support that Jefferson was this guy that wanted to be the most prepared in the room. Hence the HN title is very misleading."
Actually, the title doesn't say anything like "Jefferson was this guy that wanted to be the most prepared in the room". The article may have implied that (with good reason, I think), but not the title.
So to call the title "very misleading" because we can't know what was going on in Jefferson's mind is a bit harsh, in my (admittedly biased) opinion.
"Why do people change the wording in the HN tittles (vs original ones) so that people would click on them?"
The fact is that the stories submitted to HN have to compete with other stories. Many, many other stories. Personally, I find every story I submit to HN interesting, and think they would be found interesting by other readers on HN as well, if they'd actually take the time to read them. But if people don't click on them, they obviously won't read them, and not even know what they missed.
Usually, that means the titles have to be attractive, punchy, and interesting to grab readers' attentions, no matter how interesting the contents of the article may be. That's just a fact.
Another fact is that otherwise interesting authors sometimes suck at giving their posts or articles good titles.
The original title was "Understanding Syntactic Macros", while my submission had the title "How Lisp macros differ from static code-generation and metaprogramming" (a title I got verbatim from the body of the article, which I felt was a better and more interesting description of what the article was about).
My submission got a lot of upvotes; and, consequently, was probably read by a lot of people. Do I think it would have gotten the same amount of attention if I'd used the original title? Not for a second. The original title might have been technically correct, but not very interesting at all.
So I do occasionally change the titles of my submissions to improve the odds of the article being read (while remaining faithful to the author's intent), or to make the title more clearly reflect what the article is about. I think of what I do as a positive service to the HN community, and am not ashamed of it in the least, since when it works and the stars are right, people will actually read the article and be pleased by what they read. Then everybody wins.
Actually, the HN title does not in fact say that Jefferson prepared for all meetings like this. He clearly prepared for at least one meeting this way. And I wouldn't be surprised if this was not the only occasion where he was so prepared. But I'll grant you that perhaps using the plural of the word "meeting" instead of the singular was a tiny bit misleading.
"Furthermore in the article it is narrated one instance when Thomas Jefferson showed up prepared, which does not constitute enough evidence to support that Jefferson was this guy that wanted to be the most prepared in the room. Hence the HN title is very misleading."
Actually, the title doesn't say anything like "Jefferson was this guy that wanted to be the most prepared in the room". The article may have implied that (with good reason, I think), but not the title.
So to call the title "very misleading" because we can't know what was going on in Jefferson's mind is a bit harsh, in my (admittedly biased) opinion.
"Why do people change the wording in the HN tittles (vs original ones) so that people would click on them?"
The fact is that the stories submitted to HN have to compete with other stories. Many, many other stories. Personally, I find every story I submit to HN interesting, and think they would be found interesting by other readers on HN as well, if they'd actually take the time to read them. But if people don't click on them, they obviously won't read them, and not even know what they missed.
Usually, that means the titles have to be attractive, punchy, and interesting to grab readers' attentions, no matter how interesting the contents of the article may be. That's just a fact.
Another fact is that otherwise interesting authors sometimes suck at giving their posts or articles good titles.
Here's a case in point:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2143752
The original title was "Understanding Syntactic Macros", while my submission had the title "How Lisp macros differ from static code-generation and metaprogramming" (a title I got verbatim from the body of the article, which I felt was a better and more interesting description of what the article was about).
My submission got a lot of upvotes; and, consequently, was probably read by a lot of people. Do I think it would have gotten the same amount of attention if I'd used the original title? Not for a second. The original title might have been technically correct, but not very interesting at all.
So I do occasionally change the titles of my submissions to improve the odds of the article being read (while remaining faithful to the author's intent), or to make the title more clearly reflect what the article is about. I think of what I do as a positive service to the HN community, and am not ashamed of it in the least, since when it works and the stars are right, people will actually read the article and be pleased by what they read. Then everybody wins.