Whoever can read them, take a screenshot and upload it to BayImg. Solves it.
That might help to an extent, but it really doesn't solve the problem properly - an image of some text is a far inferior reading experience to the actual text itself.
Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
11–20 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#12Slap (paywall) into the article title. Then people who find it a problem know to skip it.
The trouble is, that's locking a set of people out of the debate entirely, which is surely not what we want to encourage. Much better to have an alternative, freely-accessible article from a different source.
It already locks people out of the debate :)
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#13Slap (paywall) into the article title. Then people who find it a problem know to skip it.
The trouble is, that's locking a set of people out of the debate entirely, which is surely not what we want to encourage. Much better to have an alternative, freely-accessible article from a different source.
Why is it so much better to encourage blogspam? Which is what you'll get when the topic is of worthwhile substance, such that there is no real alternative besides an aggregator?
Why shouldn't the burden be on the reader to jump into incognito (i.e. non-plugin) mode to read an article? Virtually everyone on HN has the technical chops to switch between an incognito browser instance and whatever they're using to read HN.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#14I'd like to see linking to paywalled sites discouraged, but banning them might be too inflexible. Perhaps a change to the submission form that suggests that the submitter looks for alternative sources first, and appends "(paywalled)" to the title if they opt to proceed.
Paywalled mass-media articles (e.g. WSJ) are very rarely worth submitting. Articles in paywalled journals (e.g. Nature) where the abstract is accessible may well be worth it. But it comes down to judgement.
Finally, I agree that (for the type of topics that HN concerns itself with) free access to information should be encouraged.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#15Does the web link work from an incognito session? I suspect that WSJ just sets a cookie on first visit to show the paywall on subsequent visits. I personally agree with the current HN paywall policy. If the Google workaround doesn't work, then WSJ will get banned from Google, which is a far harsher penalty than getting banned from HN.
It's probably the best workaround that we have right now. The trouble is, it's an additional cognitive load to determine for each and every link whether it's one that requires incognito mode. If there's a good browser plugin that supports automatically opening links from listed domains in a new incognito window, that would probably be better than the current 'refer via google' workaround.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#16No, it's a bad idea. Pay for good content.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#17Whoever can read them, take a screenshot and upload it to BayImg. Solves it.
That might help to an extent, but it really doesn't solve the problem properly - an image of some text is a far inferior reading experience to the actual text itself.
Use a service such as http://archive.is ? Or maybe copy it in pastebin?
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#18I don't know if "banning" is quite right, sometimes the article only exists behind such a structure, but may be worthwhile for the community to discuss. Mods already replace higher quality links after they show up in the discussion. The same could happen by submitting a prominent paywalled source to get the discussion rolling, and then as a better source is made or discovered switch over to it.
And the comments on HN seem to be more coupled to an event than any given particular article, meta-metadiscussion aside.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trouble is, that's locking a set of people out of the debate entirely, which is surely not what we want to encourage. Much better to have an alternative, freely-accessible article from a different source.
Why is it so much better to encourage blogspam? Which is what you'll get when the topic is of worthwhile substance, such that there is no real alternative besides an aggregator? Why shouldn't the burden be on the reader to jump into incognito (i.e. non-plugin) mode to read an article? Virtually everyone on HN has the technical chops to switch between an incognito browser instance and whatever they're using to read HN…
Yeah, I've made a point about incognito mode in a different comment - I agree, that's probably the best workaround we have right now. I wouldn't encourage 'blogspam', but I'd be surprised if 99% of paywalled articles weren't also covered to more-or-less the same quality elsewhere. The topic that kickstarted this discussion - Samsung's recall of the Note 7 - has been covered widely; theguardian.com is always a reasonable source of general-interest tech stories.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#20I'd like to see linking to paywalled sites discouraged, but banning them might be too inflexible. Perhaps a change to the submission form that suggests that the submitter looks for alternative sources first, and appends "(paywalled)" to the title if they opt to proceed. Paywalled mass-media articles (e.g. WSJ) are very rarely worth submitting. Articles in paywalled journals (e.g. Nature) where the abstract is accessi…
I like this suggestion as a pragmatic compromise. There could even be consideration of weighting paywalled articles slightly lower in the general hn algorithm.