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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#51

Post by happyslobro »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #36
chillydawg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask HN posts probably have a higher bar as they're often lower quality or less interesting than news?

I thought the "older" published algorithm was only an algorithm with sum of upvotes on the topic (and comments) with a time decay. Seems reasonable, but i don't think it true ( considering Ask HN: are just texts in the front of the title). Edit: It's definatly not in the algorithm, it's a manual ban of some sort :)

Is HN open source or something? How is it that everyone knows this algorithm?

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

#52

Post by [deleted] »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #11
cotinoco wrote: post #9

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.

[deleted]

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

#53

Post by dawson »

happyslobro wrote: post #51
NicoJuicy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the "older" published algorithm was only an algorithm with sum of upvotes on the topic (and comments) with a time decay. Seems reasonable, but i don't think it true ( considering Ask HN: are just texts in the front of the title). Edit: It's definatly not in the algorithm, it's a manual ban of some sort :)

Is HN open source or something? How is it that everyone knows this algorithm?

news.arc is open source, however, HN's voting ring and antispam features are not.

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

#54

Post by thisisit »

While we talk about how free apps are killing the market and making life difficult for an indie developer, we want to make it difficult for WSJ reporters too? If the story is broken or first reported by WSJ, example the suspicious cases one, by all means they should be the ones linked. At least that way people are aware of the good work WSJ is doing and maybe pay for the news.

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

#55

Post by amyjess »

The current policy is that articles from sites with easily-bypassable paywalls are allowed.

The WSJ paywall is not easily bypassable. The usual techniques to bypass paywalls are inconsistent with WSJ. Sometimes opening the 'web' link in an incognito window works, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't work, there's no way to get to the article.

The WSJ paywall should not be treated like the NYT paywall. It's a different animal, and it shouldn't be allowed here because it fails the easily-bypassable test.

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

#56

Post by amyjess »

tptacek wrote: post #41

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.

That works for other paywalls but not WSJ (or at least, not consistently: sometimes it works, but it usually doesn't).

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

#57

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

danso wrote: post #13
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.

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…

I block marketing domains in my daily-updated /etc/hosts file. This is a much more performant and much safer way to block malware and adware than using a browser plugin. Yet, your suggestion to just shut off your plugin helps me none.

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

#58

Post by danso »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #57
danso wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I block marketing domains in my daily-updated /etc/hosts file. This is a much more performant and much safer way to block malware and adware than using a browser plugin. Yet, your suggestion to just shut off your plugin helps me none.

Er, what help do you need? If you aren't using a plugin, then visiting the paywall article via Google should work for you as etc/hosts does not affect the referer attribute

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

#60

Post by tptacek »

amyjess wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #41

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.

That works for other paywalls but not WSJ (or at least, not consistently: sometimes it works, but it usually doesn't).

It works reliably for me. Incognito, click the "web" link on the HN byline to generate the Google search. WSJ checks for cookies and referer.
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