> Nor is there any attempt to steer discussion away from the subject of the article.
> I did those title edits to (marginally) reduce the flamebait effect of the title
Your goal was to “reduce the flamebait effect” without having any impact on the discussion? Those two sentiments are contradictory.
> That would have been a hapless attempt
No argument there, it actually makes the whole endeavor of manually inventing an Israel-friendly title to substitute a neutral and factually accurate one even stranger.
The goal here appears to be to make it seem as though a campaign to remove pro-Palestinian content simply happened on its own, which only works if the title that you wrote successfully dissuades people from reading the article. It looks like all this choice accomplished, though, was raising some eyebrows where you’ve now had to post several times to defend it, with little to no impact on the quality of the discussion of the topic. That being said, the fact that it was a half measure doesn’t provide adequate cover for the obvious intent in this particular editorial choice.
So again, why even bother with the half measures? If any mention of Israel lowers any topic below the community standards for discussion, you can simply outright ban mentions of Israel and any Israel-adjacent topics rather than manually intervening to write bespoke, more positive headlines for the country to suit any mention.
> I did those title edits to (marginally) reduce the flamebait effect of the title
Your goal was to “reduce the flamebait effect” without having any impact on the discussion? Those two sentiments are contradictory.
> That would have been a hapless attempt
No argument there, it actually makes the whole endeavor of manually inventing an Israel-friendly title to substitute a neutral and factually accurate one even stranger.
The goal here appears to be to make it seem as though a campaign to remove pro-Palestinian content simply happened on its own, which only works if the title that you wrote successfully dissuades people from reading the article. It looks like all this choice accomplished, though, was raising some eyebrows where you’ve now had to post several times to defend it, with little to no impact on the quality of the discussion of the topic. That being said, the fact that it was a half measure doesn’t provide adequate cover for the obvious intent in this particular editorial choice.
So again, why even bother with the half measures? If any mention of Israel lowers any topic below the community standards for discussion, you can simply outright ban mentions of Israel and any Israel-adjacent topics rather than manually intervening to write bespoke, more positive headlines for the country to suit any mention.