Do most people just not know how to write an interrogative sentence anymore? It is wild to me how often these fragments of questions appear on the front page.
I use this form sometimes myself in a dialogue, as it fits that context. But as an isolated story title, I invariably end up reading the whole sentence several times, trying to parse it.
HN doesn’t do it but it does have a character limit: go to the submission form and paste the original title (“Did Lead Limit Brain and Language Development in Neanderthals and Other Extinct Hominids?”) and you’ll see too long.
People lazily remove words until it fits instead of reworking the whole thing sometimes.
HN does actually have automatic text filters to remove "extraneous" words from titles, even when they do fit. People have complained that the filters are too naive and sometimes destroy necessary context but for whatever reason the mods consider it necessary.
Could be one or the other, or both, but the filter's definitely there.
Fair warning HN also automatically replaces submitted links with canonical links despite most canoncial links pointing to the original domain for SEO purposes. There is no warning or feedback for any of this, you're just expected to notice and edit your post after the fact.
I use this form sometimes myself in a dialogue, as it fits that context. But as an isolated story title, I invariably end up reading the whole sentence several times, trying to parse it.