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Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

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Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#21

Post by drinchev »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

I agree with the proposal to ban paywalled sites. Workarounds are annoying and/or temporary. HN should be about open discussion of freely available content; we shouldn't be encouraging the ghetto-ification of the web. The typical paywalled sites are almost never the only (or even the best) source of an article.

So having this mentality, HN should also ban any links to non-free books ( e.g. amazon ), links to apps and any other websites that offer a paid service / content, which you have to consume in order to be an active participant in the conversation, happening in the comments.

I don't agree with this position.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#22

Post by tsukikage »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #12
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

It already locks people out of the debate :)

This.

I'm one of the people affected; I am already shut out of the discussion, and when I am not on a fast unmetered broadband connection, the wait and the advertising thrown at me instead of the content that was promised feels like I am being punished for following HN links, every time.

I'm not suggesting it is a perfect solution, but a heads-up would be strictly better than what we have now.

(I don't much like the idea of copying paywalled content elsewhere, as suggested by other commenters - there are obvious legality issues, and also it seems morally dubious at best; the content provider has made the decision that they don't want non-paying customers to read their stuff, and however we feel about this, we ought to respect it - just as my decision not to pay for some kinds of content (and hence not receive that content) should be respected as a valid choice instead of being punished.)

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#23

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

drinchev wrote: post #21
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

I agree with the proposal to ban paywalled sites. Workarounds are annoying and/or temporary. HN should be about open discussion of freely available content; we shouldn't be encouraging the ghetto-ification of the web. The typical paywalled sites are almost never the only (or even the best) source of an article.

So having this mentality, HN should also ban any links to non-free books ( e.g. amazon ), links to apps and any other websites that offer a paid service / content, which you have to consume in order to be an active participant in the conversation, happening in the comments. I don't agree with this position.

TBH, I don't see how a link to a book page on amazon would result in a productive discussion on HN - is there a precedent? I wouldn't ban apps/websites that offer a paid service, only those that require one. And I'm willing to row back slightly from an outright ban, as I've said in other comments.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#24

Post by newscracker »

tsukikage wrote: post #3

Slap (paywall) into the article title. Then people who find it a problem know to skip it.

I would prefer this so that people who do want to spend time looking for changed referrers or cached copies and such can do so, while others can just skip it or see if they can submit a non-paywalled link. Let the submissions float up the ranks based on how people react to the nuisances of dealing with such sites.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#25

Post by NicoJuicy »

drinchev wrote: post #21
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

I agree with the proposal to ban paywalled sites. Workarounds are annoying and/or temporary. HN should be about open discussion of freely available content; we shouldn't be encouraging the ghetto-ification of the web. The typical paywalled sites are almost never the only (or even the best) source of an article.

So having this mentality, HN should also ban any links to non-free books ( e.g. amazon ), links to apps and any other websites that offer a paid service / content, which you have to consume in order to be an active participant in the conversation, happening in the comments. I don't agree with this position.

Everyone sees the same there, no problem with that.

If a blog has paid content that is only available for some people, that is similar to this discussion. Not your example in my opinion

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#26

Post by epberry »

I don't think these sights should be banned. WSJ and NYT in particular produce excellent journalism and the digital subscriptions are actually quite cheap, even if you're on a budget. If anything we should ban tabloids like Business Insider which mostly produce summaries of other sights and listicles.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#28

Post by DanBC »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #4

I agree with the proposal to ban paywalled sites. Workarounds are annoying and/or temporary. HN should be about open discussion of freely available content; we shouldn't be encouraging the ghetto-ification of the web. The typical paywalled sites are almost never the only (or even the best) source of an article.

I would much prefer HN to link to quality sites, especially if they use few ads.

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#29

Post by grahamel »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #14

I'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 agree.

The BBC do a similar thing with their football news roundup from the daily papers with " - subscription required"

This doesn't stop people who do subscribe to the site from reading the content linked to and gives a heads up for people who don't.

The Samsung story isn't exclusive to the WSJ and there are plenty of other free to access news sites that would have been better for the submission. If we ban paywalled sites entirely it would prevent submissions of exclusive content (which could be an interview or journal)

Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please

#30

Post by anilgulecha »

I propose that paywalled article be allowed, but as soon as a comment recommends a non-paywalled article for the same story, we switch to that.

HN already replaces article URLs with better ones, so the above will work through the old process with an additional parameter for what's considered "better" for HN.

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