The point is getting someone to read the article doesn't make a headline "good", it just means someone read the article.
You could have a "good" headline that catches the attention of a large number of people who don't really care, or a "bad" headline which catches the attention of a small number of people to whom the article is very relevant and really care.
Easy. I want a headline that accurately reflects the content of the article. That is my, and perhaps a few others, personal definition of a "good" headline. That is not being measured.
Given that definition, I may not go read the article because it doesn't interest me. It is still a good headline. I didn't waste my time. On the other hand, if I am interested in the content, I would have read the article and would not be irritated that I had been mislead about the content. The metric being used in the article here in no way leads to this definition of a "good" headline. More likely the opposite.
>Persuading someone to read an article which is irrelevant to them is likely a bad thing.
You're conflating content targeting with headline writing. Those are two separate points.
>Just because you don’t have a good metric for something doesn’t mean that what you can measure is better.
Certainly, if a metric is 'bad' in that it is not producing results, nobody wants to waste their time and keep using it. However, the engagement metric is producing results for many folks. Do you disagree with that?
>A metric can simply lead to bad results, and thefore be a bad metric.
Anything "can" lead to anything. That doesn't really make for much of a discussion without data to examine.
> You're conflating content targeting with headline writing. Those are two separate points.
No.
>Just because you don’t have a good metric for something doesn’t mean that what you can measure is better.
Certainly, if a metric is 'bad' in that it is not producing results, nobody wants to waste their time and keep using it. However, the engagement metric is producing results for many folks. Do you disagree with that?
This is meaningless to agree with or disagree with since the value of the results is what is in question.
>A metric can simply lead to bad results, and thefore be a bad metric.
> Anything "can" lead to anything. That doesn't really make for much of a discussion without data to examine.
>This is meaningless to agree with or disagree with since the value of the results is what is in question.
How are you judging the value of the results? I am not understanding your point here. Again, back to my original question, please propose alternate metrics, otherwise we're just arguing over minutia that misses the meat of the discussion.
I much rather steer the conversation towards solutions rather than engage over abstract "good" and "bad" terms which you don't seem to want to define. In any event, we have reached a point of disagreement, which is fine with me, so lets leave it at that. Have a nice day.
> I much rather steer the conversation towards solutions rather than engage over abstract "good" and "bad" terms which you don't seem to want to define.
That’s not really how it looked earlier in the thread.
You seemed to be strongly defending the idea that engagement is good, and not even accepting that there could be a problem.
I will make it simple: they are asserting 'popular=good'. They are not asserting if the headline is misleading, whether it's an accurate summary, etc. Just popular.
Right, but headlines don't really have a "quality" to them outside of attracting readers. So "best" is in fact "highest engagement", when it comes to headlines.
I disagree. In my opinion, an ideal headline should be a condensation of the content into a few catchy words. If engagement is all that matters, is "READ THIS ARTICLE OR YOU WILL DIE!!!" a good headline?
You could have a "good" headline that catches the attention of a large number of people who don't really care, or a "bad" headline which catches the attention of a small number of people to whom the article is very relevant and really care.
Which do you want to optimize for?