This is one of the oldest arguments on Hacker News.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
Note that "incognito window" is one of the "standard workarounds" 'dang mentions in that thread.
Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#42> I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my web experience of reading HN.
If a group of people at a party were talking about a book you had not read or a movie you had not seen, would that be breaking your party experience?
Of course not. You'd go converse with a different group that was talking about some other book or movie, or talking about sports or something.
You can do the same thing here. You have 30 submissions on the front page alone to choose from, and even more if you can bring yourself to hit the "more" link at the bottom of the page.
And unlike the book/movie discussion at a party, if you do go into the comments on an article you have not read you are unlikely to get any spoilers that will ruin it for you if you do later find the article somewhere you can read.
> An alternative like automaticly hiding articles from wsj.com would be nice, but i think it's more effectively to just ban the domain? Because it has no use for many HN-readers.
Every highly technical article discussed on HN is of no use to many HN readers. Do you think we should ban those, too?
Also, the utility of HN submissions is usually in the comments, not the article itself. The comments are usually quite useful even without reading the article. The article is merely a launching point.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#43I'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 with this proposal. Appending "(paywalled)" to the title at least lets me know this info exists and, if it's something I'm likely to be interested in, I can go to google or some other web source.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#44If nobody can read the content of a link then no discussion can take place on HN therefore it shouldn't be on HN. I say ban paywalled articles and stop generating free traffic for these websites that don't want to share information at first place.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#45> I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my web experience of reading HN. If a group of people at a party were talking about a book you had not read or a movie you had not seen, would that be breaking your party experience? Of course not. You'd go converse with a different group that was talking about some other book or movie, or talking about sports or something. You can do the same…
> Also, the utility of HN submissions is usually in the comments, not the article itself.
Well in order to properly comment and have a meaningful discussion the link should be read at first place.
Your analogy is broken, what people are doing at your party is discussing a movie they've only seen the trailer of.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#46I disagree with banning sites that have leaky paywalls. Sites that do good journalism deserve the pageviews. We shouldn't incentivize blogspam just because it's convenient. In the case of the WSJ, they were the outlet that did the investigative work that broke Theranos, among many other stories. The question boils down to whether the paywall is leaky enough. The "web" option, which helps the user find the article via…
About 6 months ago, I reproduced this problem, cleared my cookies, and then it worked. Although I've never been able to reproduce the problem after that.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#47> I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my web experience of reading HN. If a group of people at a party were talking about a book you had not read or a movie you had not seen, would that be breaking your party experience? Of course not. You'd go converse with a different group that was talking about some other book or movie, or talking about sports or something. You can do the same…
Your comparison is wrong. It's like some people at a party have a key to a door and i and many others haven't. So yes, it's a "party breaker". Not being able to read the top articles (#1 and #7 )is also a party breaker. What would happen if all the articles where behind a paywall.
If a technical article is here, i choose if it's interesting to me and upvote it accordingly. If i can't access content, then i have not choosen. The website has chosen for me and i don't think it fits in the spirit of HN.
I have not said to just ban the domain. I have said to consider it and my last sentence was to discuss it. I even added an alternative ( like add paywall to it), because it's clearly a problem for a lot of people.
Please don't change my words
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#48I'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…
Maybe a [paywall] tag in the title could help.
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#49And ban quora while you're at it? Ah, wishful thinking of course. I do agree that inaccessible sites are of little value for discussions and would gladly have a visual indicator of these sites to avoid the click, close, flag response.
Protip: setting your user agent to GoogleBot eliminates a lot of bullshit like this. Most sites, including Quora, won't hold out on GoogleBot, although the WSJ does. I guess they don't care if 90% of their article doesn't get indexed, that's pretty brave.
There is a plugin for Chrome that makes that easy: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switche...
Re: Ask HN: Consider banning paywalled articles like those from wsj.com please
#50> I can't read the paywalled articles on wsj.com anymore. So it's breaking my web experience of reading HN. If a group of people at a party were talking about a book you had not read or a movie you had not seen, would that be breaking your party experience? Of course not. You'd go converse with a different group that was talking about some other book or movie, or talking about sports or something. You can do the same…
> If a group of people at a party were talking about a book
> you had not read or a movie you had not seen, would that be
> breaking your party experience?
Not really, but, while snappy, that's not really a good depiction of what's happening here.
A better analogy might be groups of people at a large exhibition discussing what's happening in the various booths. You're welcomed to go look in the relevant booth then join the discussion. Most of the booths you can just wander up to and take a look inside, but sometimes you walk over and poke your head in and the booth bouncer looks at your visitor badge, slaps you in the face to attract your attention and demands you fill out a bunch of forms and pay them before they'll let you in.
The wasted walk and the slap in the face kinda ruin your experience, so you ask if people discussing the slapping sort of booths might maybe warn people first, but they suggest you just put up with the slaps and move on if you don't want to pay up front for everything.
How does that make you feel?