HN Stories Behind Paywalls

Recently there have been several HN links on the main page to stories behind paywalls. I am a college student, and can neither afford nor have the desire to pay for that content as I can find my news and content for free elsewhere.

This becomes a problem when several highly-ranked stories on the HN are links to sites I assume are behind paywalls, so I simply don't click on stories with from those domains. This is a sad state of affairs.

I realize that because they are charging for access to their stories they can probably create more and better content, but I will never be able to read them because, alas, I cannot access them, and I'm sure that there are a large number of people here in the same situation. Therefore, those stories do us no good because we cannot read them. If at all possible, find another source of the story (when possible) or find a free alternative to the content (also where possible). Perhaps if neither of those things exist, the story must go unshared.

So I ask you, the HN community and the admins here to not allow stories behind paywalls to get to the main page.

1. Which are the stories that you are complaining about ?

2. The only time I have seen a similar complaint is when nytimes links are posted. But those stories are not behind a paywall. The registration is free.

A request to anyone complaining about stories on frontpage. Please post links to stories unless they are glaringly obvious (like the wave of iPad articles). I don't remember coming across any paywall. So if there are links to the stories it helps to actually understand what the OP is complaining about.

NYTimes sometimes has a paywall, other times it doesn't...maybe the articles are free for a limited time. Usually you can get around the paywall by googling the article title and clicking on it in the results...they have to show Google the full page if they want it indexed.

>> This becomes a problem when several highly-ranked stories on the HN are links to sites I assume are behind paywalls, so I simply don't click on stories with from those domains.

I think that's a bad assumption. I read the top stories quite regularly, and I haven't come across a paywall in a very long time.

I haven't noticed any paywalled stories recently, but let's roll with them existing: I'm unconcerned. Not everybody is going to get equal value out of every HN story. Our community has too diverse interests for that. This is OK. I don't read the Silicon Valley inside baseball about funding, but it is very interesting to many folks here. Similarly, scalable software marketing (email, SEO, whatever) really catches my attention and yet might be boring for folks whose main challenge is fundraising.

You're a poor college student. I sympathize: I was once a poor college student. I am no longer a poor college student. Most of us here are not poor college students. Many of us run profitable businesses. Some pay amounts which would stagger your imagination for "content" (scare quotes because I don't really like that word). Content is, ahem, not a commodity -- the existence of free "content" doesn't compete with the stuff I care about any more than the existence of free food competes with those very ritzy Chicago restaurants Thomas likes.