80 ms·

Slap (paywall) into the article title. Then people who find it a problem know to skip it.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
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.
- NicoJuicy 10y ago
  It already locks people out of the debate :)
  - tsukikage 10y ago
    This. I'm one of the people affected; I am already shut out of the discussion, and when I am not on a fast unmetered broadband connection, the wait and the advertising thrown at me instead of the content that was promised feels like I am being punished for following HN links, every time. I'm not suggesting it is a perfect solution, but a heads-up would be strictly better than what we have now. (I don't much like the idea of copying paywalled content elsewhere, as suggested by other commenters - there are obvious legality issues, and also it seems morally dubious at best; the content provider has made the decision that they don't want non-paying customers to read their stuff, and however we feel about this, we ought to respect it - just as my decision not to pay for some kinds of content (and hence not receive that content) should be respected as a valid choice instead of being punished.)
- danso 10y ago
  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.
  - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
    Yeah, I've made a point about incognito mode in a different comment - I agree, that's probably the best workaround we have right now. I wouldn't encourage 'blogspam', but I'd be surprised if 99% of paywalled articles weren't also covered to more-or-less the same quality elsewhere. The topic that kickstarted this discussion - Samsung's recall of the Note 7 - has been covered widely; theguardian.com is always a reasonable source of general-interest tech stories.
  - AndrewUnmuted 10y ago
    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.
    - danso 10y ago
      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
newscracker 10y ago
I would prefer this so that people who do want to spend time looking for changed referrers or cached copies and such can do so, while others can just skip it or see if they can submit a non-paywalled link. Let the submissions float up the ranks based on how people react to the nuisances of dealing with such sites.

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.

NicoJuicy 10y ago
It already locks people out of the debate :)
- tsukikage 10y ago
  This. I'm one of the people affected; I am already shut out of the discussion, and when I am not on a fast unmetered broadband connection, the wait and the advertising thrown at me instead of the content that was promised feels like I am being punished for following HN links, every time. I'm not suggesting it is a perfect solution, but a heads-up would be strictly better than what we have now. (I don't much like the idea of copying paywalled content elsewhere, as suggested by other commenters - there are obvious legality issues, and also it seems morally dubious at best; the content provider has made the decision that they don't want non-paying customers to read their stuff, and however we feel about this, we ought to respect it - just as my decision not to pay for some kinds of content (and hence not receive that content) should be respected as a valid choice instead of being punished.)
danso 10y ago
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.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
  Yeah, I've made a point about incognito mode in a different comment - I agree, that's probably the best workaround we have right now. I wouldn't encourage 'blogspam', but I'd be surprised if 99% of paywalled articles weren't also covered to more-or-less the same quality elsewhere. The topic that kickstarted this discussion - Samsung's recall of the Note 7 - has been covered widely; theguardian.com is always a reasonable source of general-interest tech stories.
- AndrewUnmuted 10y ago
  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.
  - danso 10y ago
    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

newscracker 10y ago

I would prefer this so that people who do want to spend time looking for changed referrers or cached copies and such can do so, while others can just skip it or see if they can submit a non-paywalled link. Let the submissions float up the ranks based on how people react to the nuisances of dealing with such sites.