You make a good point. Do we really own the titles? If we don't own it, then who does? The hacker news community, the editors? I guess if we don't then we need to change our mindsets. Is that why we can't delete the submissions we make?
Wha? You can delete your own submissions. Just yesterday I submitted the RMS earthquake story before nickb did, but then deleted it after reading the Reddit comments on the same story and seeing that it was inaccurate.
