4 ms·

The Suicide of the Liberal Arts

14 points by juanplusjuan 11y ago

fspacef 11y ago
paywall
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  As usual, going to news.google.com and entering the title brings up a non-paywalled version of the piece.
  - greenyoda 11y ago
    It also works from the regular Google search page.
    - JorgeGT 11y ago
      One could also instruct his browser to send the Googlebot useragent string when browsing *.wsj.com, theoretically.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sago 11y ago
  Is there any rule or convention on HN that you shouldn't link to content that requires you to pay to read?
  - rory096 11y ago
    Yes. It's explicitly allowed. >Thanks for being concerned for the quality of HN! We're grateful for users like you. But please don't flag stories only because of a paywall. Accounts that repeatedly do so lose their flagging rights. You should flag stories because of content, not provenance. >The HN guidelines explicitly call for original sources. We want the best, most substantive version of a story. Other things being equal, we all prefer non-paywalled articles, but when things are not equal, substance should win. >Compare the WSJ piece to the originally submitted URL in this case (it's mentioned upthread). There's no question which one belongs on HN. >When there are standard workarounds to read the content, paywalls are just an inconvenience. >The more this comes up [1], the clearer it gets that we shouldn't ban paywalls. The NYT, New Yorker, Economist, WSJ, and others are major sources. HN would be poorer without them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9717601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9717601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10007470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10007470 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...
    - sago 11y ago
      Thank you. I didn't see it in the faq. Is it something one could suggest mandatory tagging for? Like [video] and [pdf], since a curious looking link might not be worth clicking if a) you need to wait for it to download or play, or b) you have to pay or go and hunt search engines to track down the content. That way the inconvenience can be chosen by people who are particularly interested in the topic, but the content is still welcome to be here.
      - dang 11y ago
        It's not that inconvenient, though annoying. Well over 90% of the paywalled articles are from the same handful of major sites with known, standard workarounds. Considering the quantity of articles we look at I'd be surprised if we weren't going through it more than anyone else here. I haven't gotten around to adding this to the FAQ yet, but will. Flagging an article that's otherwise good for HN, purely because it's behind one of these semi-paywalls, is not an ok use of flagging. We revoke flagging rights from accounts that do that.
        sago 11y ago
        I didn't flag it, and I wasn't advocating that. I asked about tagging. Thanks for the plan on the FAQ. I'm sure it is just something you osmose being here for a while. I'm sure if the article looked interesting enough I'd spend the time going through the standard workaround, but so far things haven't surpassed the 'does it look worth it' threshold, given how much interesting content there is that doesn't involve hoop-jumping. Which is why I think it might be a user-benefiting mandatory-tag, so people don't have to click through before finding that out, as [video], [pdf] and the year for old posts. At the very least people will know to copy the title into google rather than clicking through, hitting back, then copying it into search. Thanks for the upkeep of the site generally, also. It's such a good and interesting resource.
        dang 11y ago
        > I didn't flag it, and I wasn't advocating that. I asked about tagging. I probably posted a generic reply instead of answering your specific question. Sorry about that. In general, we're reluctant to add tags for things like that. The noise might outweigh the signal, and HN has always been a bare-bones operation. But we'll think about it.
colomon 11y ago
Thought the beginning was weak stuff, but the three paragraphs about his Scarlet Letter school reading experience were spot on.

14 points by juanplusjuan 11y ago

fspacef 11y ago

paywall

Turing_Machine 11y ago
As usual, going to news.google.com and entering the title brings up a non-paywalled version of the piece.
- greenyoda 11y ago
  It also works from the regular Google search page.
  - JorgeGT 11y ago
    One could also instruct his browser to send the Googlebot useragent string when browsing *.wsj.com, theoretically.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sago 11y ago
Is there any rule or convention on HN that you shouldn't link to content that requires you to pay to read?
- rory096 11y ago
  Yes. It's explicitly allowed. >Thanks for being concerned for the quality of HN! We're grateful for users like you. But please don't flag stories only because of a paywall. Accounts that repeatedly do so lose their flagging rights. You should flag stories because of content, not provenance. >The HN guidelines explicitly call for original sources. We want the best, most substantive version of a story. Other things being equal, we all prefer non-paywalled articles, but when things are not equal, substance should win. >Compare the WSJ piece to the originally submitted URL in this case (it's mentioned upthread). There's no question which one belongs on HN. >When there are standard workarounds to read the content, paywalls are just an inconvenience. >The more this comes up [1], the clearer it gets that we shouldn't ban paywalls. The NYT, New Yorker, Economist, WSJ, and others are major sources. HN would be poorer without them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9717601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9717601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10007470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10007470 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...
  - sago 11y ago
    Thank you. I didn't see it in the faq. Is it something one could suggest mandatory tagging for? Like [video] and [pdf], since a curious looking link might not be worth clicking if a) you need to wait for it to download or play, or b) you have to pay or go and hunt search engines to track down the content. That way the inconvenience can be chosen by people who are particularly interested in the topic, but the content is still welcome to be here.
    - dang 11y ago
      It's not that inconvenient, though annoying. Well over 90% of the paywalled articles are from the same handful of major sites with known, standard workarounds. Considering the quantity of articles we look at I'd be surprised if we weren't going through it more than anyone else here. I haven't gotten around to adding this to the FAQ yet, but will. Flagging an article that's otherwise good for HN, purely because it's behind one of these semi-paywalls, is not an ok use of flagging. We revoke flagging rights from accounts that do that.
      - sago 11y ago
        I didn't flag it, and I wasn't advocating that. I asked about tagging. Thanks for the plan on the FAQ. I'm sure it is just something you osmose being here for a while. I'm sure if the article looked interesting enough I'd spend the time going through the standard workaround, but so far things haven't surpassed the 'does it look worth it' threshold, given how much interesting content there is that doesn't involve hoop-jumping. Which is why I think it might be a user-benefiting mandatory-tag, so people don't have to click through before finding that out, as [video], [pdf] and the year for old posts. At the very least people will know to copy the title into google rather than clicking through, hitting back, then copying it into search. Thanks for the upkeep of the site generally, also. It's such a good and interesting resource.
        dang 11y ago
        > I didn't flag it, and I wasn't advocating that. I asked about tagging. I probably posted a generic reply instead of answering your specific question. Sorry about that. In general, we're reluctant to add tags for things like that. The noise might outweigh the signal, and HN has always been a bare-bones operation. But we'll think about it.

colomon 11y ago

Thought the beginning was weak stuff, but the three paragraphs about his Scarlet Letter school reading experience were spot on.