
Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic - dang
Publications like NYT, WSJ, the Economist, and the New Yorker have paywalls that leave ways for readers to work around them. Such stories are OK to post to Hacker News. Yes, this sucks, but the loss of many substantive articles would suck worse. In the future, when someone doesn&#x27;t understand this, please politely direct them to this thread or to HN&#x27;s FAQ [1], which now makes this explicit.<p>Complaints about paywalls are off topic, so please don&#x27;t post them. The spirit of HN is to discuss specific articles and avoid generic rehashing. Arguments about The Paywall Question are all the same. For an example of what we want to avoid, see [2]. For more on our thinking, see [3].<p>It&#x27;s ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. But please do this without going on about paywalls. Focus on the content.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsfaq.html</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10178012" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10178012</a><p>3. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?query=by:dang%20paywall&amp;sort=byDate&amp;prefix&amp;page=0&amp;dateRange=all&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?query=by:dang%20paywall&amp;sort=byDate&amp;...</a>
======
vonklaus
I would very much like to see a small tag indicating paywalled content. It is
easy to tell that NYT, WSJ etc are paywalled, and some even allow free
viewing, however scientific papers and academia seem to have a higher
proportion of such sites. Since this community is pretty STEM centic, a lot of
papers, journals, and smaller subscription sites are posted here. If users
could simply "tag as paywalled" it would be a timesaver and a rather nice
feature. Thanks.

~~~
dang
HN generally eschews tags, and I fear having to maintain this (edit: I mean
manually). But we'll think about it.

~~~
jeo1234
It could be an optional tag like [dead] or [flagged].

~~~
dang
But those are automated. I've added "manually" above to clarify why I fear
this.

~~~
jeo1234
Would it be practical to introduce a tag system which lets each user manage
their own list?

~~~
guipsp
You can do this yourself with a userscript

~~~
bigiain
This would be my preferred option.

I've got a specific use case that's not applicable to most HN readers - here
in .au Popular Science links are useless - they do a geo redirect based on
your ip address, which redirects me to the homepage of the .com.au version of
their site, which in general doesn't even have the original article
available...

~~~
voltagex_
I'm not sure how configurable userscripts are, but I'd love to add this.

I don't _really_ want to write RES for HackerNews, but it's an interesting
project for the last week of my holidays.

------
downandout
Is it OK to mention it when it appears that a poster is spamming paywalled
content for a specific site? For example, this guy [1] stopped posting
altogether almost immediately after I politely pointed out the sheer volume of
paywalled WSJ articles he was posting [2]. It isn't inconceivable that this
account (and many others) were created solely to spam paywalled content to HN.
If we are forbidden from mentioning such things, I think we are going to have
a problem around here with many more attempts by paywalled sites to exploit
HN.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=abetaha](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=abetaha)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9641922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9641922)

~~~
dang
Sure, that's such a special case that I don't see why it would be a problem.
You can also email us (hn@ycombinator.com) when an account is using HN solely
to promote a particular site. If we can email them, we often ask people not to
do that. And in egregious cases we take away submission privileges.

------
a3n
Complaining about paywalls on HN is strong irony. Paywalls are erected around
websites intended to make money.

A significant portion of the HN community are specifically building websites
intended to make money. Perhaps the majority in the past, before the Elves
left the forest.

What's special about news sites, that compels people to complain about them
popping up on HN? If it's really a bad thing, then shouldn't we be complaining
about non-news sites that make money (or are trying to?).

Isn't every YC company trying to make money, and charging for what their
website offers?

Sheesh.

~~~
hueving
It's not really ironic though. This is a site for discussing articles. Having
to pay to play really ruins the experience and excludes a lot of valuable
discussion.

Nobody cares about sites trying to make money. What people complain about is
when it means an HN reader has to directly pay to participate.

~~~
dang
> Having to pay to play really ruins the experience

Indeed it would, which is why it's not happening. That's already clear from
the title: "workarounds" means the only price is a bit of annoyance.

------
Animats
This will get worse. Ad revenue per click for news sites is down so much that
most non-paywalled news sites are now utter crap.

If you're posting a story which began with a press release, it's better to
find the original press release (probably on PR Newswire) and link to that. At
least you can read the hype before it was munged by some minimum-wage Demand
Media employee.

~~~
steckerbrett
It'll be interesting where it goes next. The content on most news sites is
complete trash, and they are obviously getting desperate to make money in any
way possible.

------
minimaxir
> _paywalls that leave ways for readers to work around them_

I would call pasting-the-URL-into-Google-Search less of a intentional
workaround and more of a trick to take advantage of the websites' compliance
with Google rules.

Not every HN reader would know to do that, or look in the comments for that
"workaround."

~~~
dang
> _Not every HN reader would know to do that._

That's right, so it's ok for people to ask and share how to read an article in
the comments. There shouldn't need to be more than one or two comments about
this, and it helps everyone focus on the content.

What's off-topic is the generic tangent of paywall complaining.

~~~
stretchwithme
So all I need to do is read every comment, then I can try to find out how to
read the article?

~~~
michaelt
That's one option. You can also google the title or URL of the article (this
is the most common workaround); or you can search the comments for the word
'paywall'; or you can purchase a membership or subscription for the paywalled
site; or you can skip reading the article.

~~~
jsprogrammer
So all I need to do is try every possible option? And even then it may fail
(scientific journals, newspaper archives, etc)?

The links are just huge wastes of time. A prominent tag attached to the
article would be ok, but in the absence of any other feature to avoid these
time sinks, it makes sense to flag the articles to save others from additional
wastage.

~~~
DanBC
The links are a waste of time to you. Other people have useful subscriptions
or know the work-arounds and those links are useful to them.

Of the flood of links posted to /newest the paywalled links are nowhere near
the most problematic.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I'm curious what people think are the most problematic links?

------
probably_wrong
Since I can't be the only one looking for things to break, I'll ask: What if I
complain about a paywall _and_ provide a mirror at the same time?

~~~
dang
Then I suppose your remark would be partly on and partly off topic.

------
jcr
Would we also need to carve out an exception for the typically vapid
"announcement" articles advertising paywalled academic journal papers?

The announcement-mills (phys.org comes to mind but there are plenty of others
including nature.com itself) are not really "original" sources, the papers
are, but such announcement-advertisement articles are submitted regularly.

Finding the freely available pre-print and/or author provided copies without
resorting to (ahem) _other_ workarounds is a pain but useful.

~~~
dang
I'm reluctant to say that paywalls with _no_ workaround should be banned
outright, but obviously they're not covered by the "ok" policy.

Sometimes people post these and others respond with links to freely available
versions, or articles about the work. In such cases we're happy to update the
URLs.

We're not happy about announcement mills either (and those sites are penalized
on HN), but that's arguably a separate problem.

~~~
jcr
My concern is with the interaction of the "original source" rule and the "ok
for paywalls with workarounds" rule preventing most articles on new research.
The "original source" papers are often locked behind paywalls (or embargoes)
when the insipid announcement mill advertisement articles start appearing.
Even supposedly reputable official university press sites are thoroughly
guilty these overtly promotional teaser articles. The trouble is, lightweight
advertisement articles are often the only things we can (legally) access when
the "news" first becomes public.

As much as I hate to admit it, the sad state of suckage for announcement mills
(including university press sites) actually does have some minor advantages;
which would you be more inclined to read and up-vote?

" _Astronomers detect furthest galaxy yet with Keck telescope_ "

or

" _Lyman-Alpha Emission From A Luminous Z=8.68 Galaxy: Implications For
Galaxies As Tracers Of Cosmic Reionization_ "

Non-Astronomers would be lucky if they understand the details presented in
just the abstract of the paper, and I say this as a non-astronomer who does
_NOT_ understand all of said details. Reading original source papers takes far
more effort than reading lightweight announcements, and this gets to the
fundamental question of, "What do we want HN to be?"

The status quo of interested HN users finding and comment-linking to the
original source papers (if available) on the puff-piece stories is a lot of
manual work and some stuff gets missed, but it really does tend to work out
reasonably well. If we forbid paywalls without workarounds and require
original sources, then we will miss out on a lot of great new research.
Besides infringement, there is no easy answer for this situation.

------
kuschku
I’d like to complain: For me, from Germany, the Paywall workarounds for WSJ do
NOT work at all. This means I can’t read those articles, and have to use
proxies to do so. This is not acceptable.

EDIT: One solution would be to use a link to a webcache, or screenshot,
waybackmachine, or similar

~~~
nkurz
When you say "This is not acceptable", what do you mean? If a link is
accessible from Germany without a proxy but not the US, would that be
acceptable? What if it's accessible to you in Germany and me in the US without
a proxy, but not to someone in China unless they use a proxy?

So maybe it's OK to require a proxy from China? But what if a user in North
Korea can't access a proxy? Should that link also be prohibited on HN? How is
HN supposed to know what consists of an acceptable workaround, and what does
not? Are the standards different for different countries?

It seems simpler to assume that the articles that get upvotes have people who
want to read them, and that if people want to read the article everyone is
raving about, they will find a way. It's Hacker News after all.

~~~
kuschku
If a link is not available to everyone, link to archive.org, or archive.is, or
Google webcache.

This means everyone can read it.

~~~
dang
People do that in the threads, which is helpful. It's usually better not to
supplant the canonical URL of a story in its link.

This problem will get a lot easier when we have a way to group the related
URLs for a story. That's something we are eventually going to work on. Indeed,
I wonder if it couldn't turn into a broader solution to the paywall question.

~~~
nkurz
The Google scholar approach might work as a format. Official link as the
hypertext, publicly accessible link (if available) in the right column.
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1273530321270058317...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=12735303212700583171&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en)

------
nkurz
Long ago in the mists of time, some Usenet groups had a wonderful policy of
self-moderation. If you wanted to post something, you had to figure out how to
add an "Approved" header to your own post. A hassle the first couple times you
had to do it, but great for overall signal-to-noise after that:
[http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AltHackers](http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AltHackers)

I'm occasionally tempted to think that HN should in the same direction: no
links whatsoever, everything is plain text. You want to read the article, you
cut-and-paste. Or write your own browser extension, or whistle it into a cell-
phone or something. Terrible for rapid reading, but would definitely cut down
on the complaining about paywall tags. One-click links probably violate some
Amazon patent anyway.

Taking it a step farther, all submissions must be done rot13. If you can't
figure out how to translate a link to rot13 (or install an appropriate browser
extension), maybe you shouldn't be posting here. Not because you are
inherently unworthy, but because you haven't bothered to read and follow the
instructions. The instructions could be given on the bottom of the guidelines
page, and all improperly formatted submissions could redirect to the
guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

I feel like it's either that, or more all-Erlang days:

    
    
      You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra 
      boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have 
      posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create 
      sites to get hired by Twitter.
    

pg,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145)

And while you are at it, get off my lawn. :)

~~~
jcr
Gubhtu V ybir lbhe cubar juvfgyvat cebcbfny, n orggre vqrn zvtug or gb unir n
phgbhg bs na naguebcbzbecuvp pnegbba punenpgre jvgu uvf unaq uryq bhg ng n
cnegvphyne urvtug juvyr ubyqvat n fvta fnlvat, "Lbh zhfg or guvf
vagryyrpghnyyl vagrerfgrq gb rawbl guvf fvgr."

------
steckerbrett
If the workarounds are so commonly accepted, can you start automagically
editing the links to be the google/url redirect bypass then?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Or add a [bypass paywall] link, like there used to be a [scribd] link? ;).

~~~
dang
It's tempting. But
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179116).

~~~
steckerbrett
Even just a [paywall] like you do [pdf] to warn people not to bother clicking
it would help greatly.

~~~
dang
[pdf] is added by software.

------
lmm
Under what circumstances will this decision be reconsidered? It would be very
bad to adopt a permanent policy that prevented any discussion of itself, since
there would be no way to correct any such policy if it turned out to be a bad
one.

~~~
dang
If it has bad consequences we'll reconsider it, like any decision.

------
akkartik
This might be the right thread to ask this: the usual workaround for WSJ of
googling for the article never works for me. Neither do the google-redirecting
links people post. Anybody else have this problem?

~~~
tyho
You should install refcontrol, it is a firefox extension. It allow you to
create rules for your Referer header. Make a rule so that wsj.com receives the
referer www.google.com.

~~~
akkartik
I should add that this invariably happens when I don't have the time to debug
things. Then nothing works: clearing cookies, going incognito, switching
browsers. But of course when I go looking for examples right now everything
seems ok.

I'll keep refcontrol in mind next time it happens, thanks. I'm not sure why
setting the header this way would work when clicking directly on the link or
the google search page doesn't, but heck I have no model for this behavior
anymore.

------
huhtenberg
Perhaps add [paywalled] to the post title, link it to the FAQ entry _and_
expand latter with a list of common workarounds?

~~~
dang
I think it's safest for readers to help each other rather than for HN to push
specific workarounds. If someone wanted to make an unofficial list, I don't
see why they couldn't link to it.

~~~
hueving
At least add the tag though so readers that don't have subscriptions to these
things can know immediately if they need to skip the article or look at the
comments to figure out how they can cheat to read.

------
TheLoneWolfling
For one, I do not consider this OK.

For two, declaring rules and then declaring that no-one is allowed to talk
about said rules sets a _very_ dangerous precedent.

For three, pretty darn ironic that both this and
[http://deathtobullshit.com/](http://deathtobullshit.com/) are on the front
page at the same time.

~~~
jfoster
My interpretation isn't that no one can talk about the rules, just that the
comments on an article should be about the article content. You could still
post your own Ask HN to discuss the rules.

~~~
derefr
A lot of off topic comments would be better served being made into full-blown
blog posts (even if the author has no blog otherwise; one-off pages like Gists
work fine for this) and then submitted. If HN wants to talk about the topic,
the submitted page will get voted up like any other article, and discussion
will ensue.

------
hueving
Add a way to indicate that an article is pay walled before you ban talking
about it. Otherwise you are just trying to police people from talking about
the elephant in the room.

~~~
dang
It isn't the elephant in the room. It's been the status quo for as long as HN
has existed. You could hardly find more common publications here than the NYT.

The objections seem to be largely ideological, and reciting ideology is the
essence of uninteresting in HN's sense. If someone comes up with something new
and clever to say about paywalls, by all means post it as a story and let the
community have at it. Repeating complaints for the zillionth time, not so
much.

~~~
hueving
>It isn't the elephant in the room.

If it wasn't, you wouldn't be implementing a policy to stop people from
talking about it.

~~~
dang
It seems we understand that phrase differently. People certainly have not
stopped talking about it.

------
mikeash
Great move, in my opinion. I always found the complaining to be tedious, since
bypassing these this is so easy for people who are good with computers. Which
people on this site ought to be.

------
Permit
This thread itself is pretty telling. As far as I can tell its made up of two
groups:

1\. People complaining about paywalls

2\. People complaining about poor quality content

I'd wager that most HN users are using AdBlock as well. How do you reconcile
this with the above complaints? I'm sure some users restrict AdBlock on
certain sites, but I suspect it's far from the majority.

------
ikeboy
Does this apply for academic links as well? I.e. can we post a mirror to a
paywalled study?

~~~
JorgeGT
Apparently yes, think what would happen if HN would lose Nature, Science,
Cell, IEEE, etc. original content!

~~~
ikeboy
Several of those don't have real or full paywalls anymore.

I was thinking more of Elsevier, which actively sues websites that publish
mirrors of papers (see [https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-cracks-down-on-
pirated-sci...](https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-cracks-down-on-pirated-
scientific-articles-150609/)).

~~~
JorgeGT
There are indeed a lot of high IF journals in Elsevier (152 on Computer
Science alone) so if pay-only news articles are allowed I don't see why hard
science shouldn't, right?

~~~
ikeboy
I think you may have misunderstood. I'm not asking if we're allowed to submit
links to Elsevier. I'm asking if we're allowed to include a mirror in the
comments of an Elsevier submission. This is different from news articles
because the news paywalls are only meant to kick in after a bit of usage and
are easily avoided by new window or similar, while studies generally require a
subscription or paying a fee. The "workaround" for those involves someone with
a subscription downloading it and uploading elsewhere, and whether that's
allowed on HN wasn't clear from this post.

~~~
nkurz
I'll go out on a limb and answer that on Dan's behalf: Yes, please post these
links in the comments. They are a benefit the community. Dan's needs to walk a
fine line between having working links and not being sued by evil companies.
This is what he is referring to in some of his comments when he mentions
'lines that should not be crossed'. He can't (read 'would be wise not to')
offer you blanket permission in advance to post such links. The link may even
be removed in the unlikely (?) event that HN receives a threatening letter
from Elsevier, and at that point, a policy may be loudly proclaimed. But until
you are explicitly told not to, please keep posting the links that let people
read the publicly funded research.

~~~
mirimir
What about [http://sci-hub.org/](http://sci-hub.org/) ?

------
digimarkup
It doesn't seem like it would be too much work to automate the paywall
workaround by automatically redirecting people through Google. Is there a
reason this isn't being done? Seems like better UX.

~~~
dang
Yes, it's tempting to try to automate the problem away, or at least reduce it
through software. But see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179116).

------
alexandernl
At Blendle we try to solve this with micropayments. NYT, WSJ and The Economist
(and many others) are already working with us in The Netherlands en Germany
[https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical-
experiment-w...](https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical-experiment-
with-micropayments-in-journalism-365-days-later-f3b799022edc)

------
6t6t6
In my opinion, HN should be a place where people discuss about articles that
are freely accessible to everyone.

Articles from sites that are accessible to a limited group of people have no
place here. Instead, they should be discussed in the comments of the article
itself.

------
seiji
(as of right now, this post is 2 hours old and has 102 comments on a Sunday
evening. What's wrong with us?)

------
jeo1234
Why do these sites have an SEO exception?

~~~
steckerbrett
If they didn't, Google would ban them for showing different content to the
Google crawler and to users. They wouldn't get much traffic if they had a
paywall that didn't allow this.

------
cat9
"A workaround exists, it's the user's fault for not knowing it" is terrible
interaction design.

Having links on the site fail arbitrarily devalues the entire page. Users
aren't stopping and thinking "hey, is clicking this link going to waste my
time?" \- which results in the entire system being perceived as less reliable
and trustworthy.

I agree that such discussions are off-topic, but is there a better way to
handle these articles than "RTFM, noob"?

~~~
dang
You're quoting things I didn't say. The snark-amplification mechanism of
putting the most uncharitable spin you can possibly think of on someone's
remarks is one of the worsts you can do in comments here. I spend a lot of
time asking users not to do it to other users.

Of course the paywalls suck. Is there any user who has to deal with more of
these annoyances than we ourselves do? There can't be many.

The question is the lesser of two evils. Anyone who doesn't get what a
disaster it would be for HN to lose the NYT, WSJ, Economist, and New Yorker
doesn't get HN in the first place.

~~~
cat9
Thanks for the ad hominem response, it really reminds me what's great about
this site.

~~~
dang
I don't think it was ad hominem, but it's possible that I misinterpreted your
comment as snarkier than you meant it. If so, I'm sorry.

~~~
lmm
The ad hominem was "doesn't get HN in the first place". It's very dismissive
of people who disagree with you. And it's not the first time you've responded
like this.

I don't get it? No, you don't get it.

~~~
dang
Oh, I see now. Sorry about that. Normally I'd delete it, but in this case I
suppose I'd better leave it in.

I still don't see any ad hominem, and as a statement of HN's very specific
values it seems obvious to me, but you're right that I shouldn't have said it
in a dismissive way.

------
nqzero
for those of us that fail to jump thru hoops to work around the paywall, the
paywall is the content ... it's not off-topic at all

------
ihsw
What will you do when those workarounds disappear?

What will you do when every article on the homepage is paywalled?

What will you do when users provide free mirrors, either pasted in the
comments section or hosted elsewhere?

Will you be providing easy-to-use guides for users (new or otherwise) on how
to effectively utilize such workarounds?

I'd like to add my voice to the calls for some kind of flair obviating that a
submitted link leads to paywalled content, so that I may avoid such links.

~~~
dang
I don't know. If the situation changes, we can adapt.

~~~
JorgeGT
Please clarify: is pasting the full text/screenshot of the article in a
comment an acceptable workaround under this new policy?

~~~
dang
The more these questions get into legal areas the less I can help you. YC's
lawyers are charming, but moderation of this site has pretty much failed if we
have to resort to asking them things.

But let me take a crack at this. No, pasting the full text of an article
directly into the thread is not a good workaround. First, it gums up the
thread. Second, obvious copyright issues.

Therefore, if there's a standard workaround like "incognito window", "turn
cookies off", or "google the article title", the way to help people is to
teach them that. If none of those things work, linking to a different way to
read the content (such as a Google cache link or an archive link) is probably
ok. Beyond that my crystal ball gets cloudy.

------
linkydinkandyou
Good! And people who complain about paywalls should be banned.

I'd much rather read a primary source than read a blog that summarizes a splog
that links to another blog that wrote about a headline that appeared in the NY
Times.

I pay for NYTimes, WSJ, ACM Digital Library, etc. And most often the best
information is from these sites.

~~~
hueving
Yeah! Screw poor people!

------
gergles
From (2): > We all hate paywalls, but an HN without NYT, WSJ, The Economist,
The New Yorker etc. would obviously suck so much worse that anyone who doesn't
get that doesn't get HN.

This statement is up for debate. I don't get why you continue to declare this
like it is settled. Paywalls _do_ limit access to content, no matter how easy
or numerous the workarounds. In my opinion, the site suffers when paywalled
links are posted. I don't think it's a just-so story that NYT/Economist/WSJ
links are _so_ important to HN that we simply must suffer their existence.

Declaring discussion of paywalls thoughtcrime is not good for the community.
Suggesting people who can flag should not flag because they should figure out
which of the 18 different workarounds they can use to read content is also not
appropriate.

> Just so it's clear: this is a sure way to lose your flagging privileges on
> HN

Wow. So flagging an article that you can't read (by design), is a way to lose
the ability to flag. What exactly are you supposed to flag, then? If you can't
flag "this page just asks me for a credit card", then what exactly can you
flag?

~~~
dang
It's been pointed out to me that I shouldn't have said "anyone who doesn't get
that doesn't get HN" because it sounds dismissive. So I'd word that
differently now. The underlying point stands: many of the best articles posted
to HN come from these publications. Wiping all that out—which a strong anti-
paywall rule would do—would be disastrous to the intellectual curiosity that
is core to HN.

> _they should figure out which of the 18 different workarounds they can use_

Workarounds are a nuisance but this exaggerates it. Overwhelmingly these
articles come from a small number of sites that have the same few workarounds.
Most people have internalized them long ago (or installed software to do so),
and for anyone who hasn't, it's fine to share info like "open an incognito
window" or "google the article title" in the threads. What's not fine is to
turn every thread into the same old argument about paywalls.

> _what exactly can you flag_

You should flag things that shouldn't be on HN in the first place. But a New
Yorker article on, say, Nabokov and butterflies obviously _should_ be on HN.
(Obviously, that is, given the mandate and history of the site.) Articles on
offbeat topics that lead outside HN's core grooves are the most endangered
species here. We need more of those. Flagging them is an abuse of flagging.
Sometimes people do that because of paywalls, even when the paywall has a
trivial workaround like an incognito window. That's what I was referring to.

Intellectual diversity is the founding value of this site:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html).
That's what I meant re "getting" HN. But I'll try to be more helpful than
dismissive when communicating it.

------
cardiffspaceman
-1

The best way to keep these "off-topic" comments off HN is to make the
sacrifice and stop rewarding those sites with traffic.

~~~
cryptoz
That might be the "most effective" way to keep those comments off HN, but it's
not the "best". Remember what HN actually is. This isn't a site that only
exists to champion free-content-for-everyone-at-all-times-no-matter-what.
Links are submitted to distribute news and foster good discussion.

The goal of this move isn't "stop people from talking about paywalls at all
times". The goal here is to increase the average quality of discussion that
takes place, when a paywall article is submitted. Different things.

------
jellicle
If the link as posted in the story does not work for people, it does not work.
That's your fault.

"Workarounds" which are already incorporated into the link by the time I see
them are fine. Workarounds that require me to download seven apps and swing a
chicken over my head while ROT13'ing the URL are... not.

It is the site's job (HN's job) to provide usable links to its readers. That
is literally your only job, the only thing you are here for. If it fails, it
fails, and it should be criticized for that.

~~~
JadeNB
> It is the site's job (HN's job) to provide usable links to its readers.

I think any talk about the responsibilities of an ad-free site to its readers,
much less a statement that its _job_ is to behave in the way that one of its
readers prefers, is probably presumptuous at best.

------
hacknat
Ugh, the entitlement about paywalls on this thread is obnoxious. Pay for the
publication/article, don't pay for it, but why should anyone's opinion about
paywall's dictate link etiquette/form, etc. If you run into a link and
discover it's to pay-walled content simply move on, you've only wasted like 3
seconds of your life.

Also, I'll be creating a scraper that analyzes users' comment histories to
determine when they complain about paywalls if they've ever complained about
the state of journalism or scientific funding. If they have, I will link to
the evidence so they can be duly down-voted, ridiculed, and shamed.

~~~
d23
> Pay for the publication/article, don't pay for it, but why should anyone's
> opinion about paywall's dictate link etiquette/form, etc.

Because it directly affects this community. It's a link aggregator site for
heaven's sake.

> If you run into a link and discover it's to pay-walled content simply move
> on, you've only wasted like 3 seconds of your life.

I could take this argument ad infinitum. Why didn't you just move on instead
of posting a comment here? Why does anyone say anything critical ever instead
of just moving on?

> Also, I'll be creating a scraper that analyzes users' comment histories to
> determine when they complain about paywalls if they've ever complained about
> the state of journalism or scientific funding. If they have, I will link to
> the evidence so they can be duly down-voted, ridiculed, and shamed.

Great, vigilante justice and public ridicule over a topic you supposedly don't
care one whit about.

~~~
hacknat
Geese, I was joking about the scraper.

