6 ms·

A few points: 1) The workaround works for me if I open an incognito chrome window and copy/paste the "web" link from HN. It doesn't work w/o incognito. 2) If t

A few points: 1) The workaround works for me if I open an incognito chrome window and copy/paste the "web" link from HN. It doesn't work w/o incognito. 2) If the article gets upvotes, then enough people have subscriptions (or workarounds) to warrant a discussion. Let the votes do their job. If you really don't want to see WSJ articles, install/make a browser extension that does it for you.

nikon 10y ago
Right click on the "web" link and click "Open Link In Incognito Window".
- lloydde 10y ago
  Hasn't worked for some time. All the articles on workarounds I've looked at recently have comments with no or low success rates.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
Incognito doesn't work for me. Like I said in the OP, all of the workarounds I've heard of have not been working for some months now. Neither does Google search or anything else. I don't even use a mainstream browser with an incognito mode anyway, I'd have to open up a seperate browser just to read WSJ articles even if it did work. This is ridiculous.
- gravypod 10y ago
  You should also take into account that by the time an article makes it here there are usually multiple copies of it from other news providers. WSJ rarely has exclusive articles so it makes no sense to provide a link to WSJ when the exact same article is on some other site. The only unique pieces are usually op-eds which usually have similar articles on other popular publications as well.
  - lloydde 10y ago
    This is in no way accurate. I've done this type of search almost every day in the last couple of weeks and my success rate is less than 50%. For example the Snapchat article on the IPO and voting rights did find any articles that were more than the WSJ headline.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    To counter this point, when the WSJ does actually have an exclusive story or is the first to break it, we ought to recognize that. Rewarding blogspam copycats is a very bad policy.
- jrs235 10y ago
  I'm beginning to believe that the WSJ and others are starting to monitor the number of referrals directly from google and if it hits some threshold they turn on the paywall for the article for some period of time as the direct link from google in incognito doesn't always work for me either. "Oh look! Direct hits from google have gone up 300% (or have been hit XX times) in the last 2 minutes... turn on the sliding 5 minute paywall!"
  - aembleton 10y ago
    Or they check by IP Address. They know the Google ones as they regularly crawl all of their site whereas the IP addresses of random HN users don't.
    - detaro 10y ago
      The workaround only exists because Google requires sites to serve users the same page as the crawlers, so if they do that Google should de-rank them or throw them out of the index.
      - jrs235 10y ago
        I agree. But if they are in fact using some "temporary" paywall "technology" then it would be [more] difficult for google to know and/or catch them in the act. As someone else stated in these comments: "If you start an incognito window with a Google News search for the headline and can't access it, use the "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of the search page to let Google know."
- stronglikedan 10y ago
  Using a mainstream browser with incognito mode is a workaround. Although, as some others have pointed out, that may no longer work either.
  - ddevault 10y ago
    If you had read my comment properly, you would have seen that the "workaround" doesn't work for me, and I was saying even if it did work, it's fucking stupid to have to go to such lengths to read an article here.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    That trick used to work for me, but as of last week it doesn't. While I know it is unlikely, I wonder if WSJ has figured out a counter-trick.
irq-1 10y ago
> Let the votes do their job. Voting doesn't work if people are disenfranchised. 20% of HN discussing an article the other 80% can't read will be the end of HN. Maybe if this was a sub-reddit "community" where access to the WSJ was assumed, but HN is a general and open discussion board. (Also, when politics or people like Taleb Nissam or Paul Krugman are discussed, the voting isn't very informative.)
- rubidium 10y ago
  Using "disenfranchised" in this case with made up statistics of 20% and 80% is rather odd. There are _plenty_ of discussions to participate in here. WSJ make up maybe 1-2 articles on the front page per day? Can someone explain why this matters enough to even consider a banning of content? For those who don't want to see it: upvote other things! I'd much rather see a surge in voting non-mainstream media content then for HN to enforce banning. Come on people, we can be better! [[As a personal aside, I typically don't upvote and rarely read discussions about mainstream press (WSJ, NY times, WashPost,Economist) here. ]]
  - lloydde 10y ago
    > WSJ make up maybe 1-2 articles on the front page per day Per day!
    - evgen 10y ago
      Damn those pesky journalists doing all the research and legwork to discover and explain information (and doing it over and over again to the point where they become a useful and trusted news source) and then expecting to get paid for it. Don't they realize that the sharing economy means I get to use all your stuff whenever I feel like it? The workaround is not difficult, deal with it.
      - DanBC 10y ago
        > The workaround is not difficult, Several people have said that the work around is not working for them. That's the whole point of the thread. It's in the OP, it's in several replies. Most people wouldn't mind paywall links if the workaround was working, but it's not working for some people.
giarc 10y ago
Upvotes != access Many people may see the headline and upvote it so it attracts some discussion in the comments.
- falcolas 10y ago
  Agreed; I've also seen more than a few users mention opening many links at once, upvoting all of them, then going in and reading them.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pyb 10y ago
Problem is, sometimes people just upvote based on the title.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
"If you really don't want to see WSJ articles, install/make a browser extension that does it for you." I stared something like this a few months ago and forgot about it. The general idea was to apply custom styling to regex matched page content. I got as far as hard coding everything I wanted in to JS file so there's no UI for it. Currently, it applies a black bar to links matching the patterns in the list but it could just as easily style it however you like. If anyone is interested, here's the JavaScript [0] and a basic manifest [1] to load it as a FF web extension (about:debugging -> Load Temporary Add-on). Edit: What it looks like with a match on HN [2] [0] http://pastebin.com/raw/tPJXJcM5 http://pastebin.com/raw/tPJXJcM5 [1] http://pastebin.com/raw/zi6UV9ZL http://pastebin.com/raw/zi6UV9ZL [2] http://i.imgur.com/HQVopbQ.png http://i.imgur.com/HQVopbQ.png
RodericDay 10y ago
There's something very meta about the ideology of the WSJ as conveyed to us by a WSJ subscriber. Let the vote market do its job, regulations are oppressive, don't fixate on inherent asymmetries to this decision making mechanism, etc.

nikon 10y ago

Right click on the "web" link and click "Open Link In Incognito Window".

lloydde 10y ago
Hasn't worked for some time. All the articles on workarounds I've looked at recently have comments with no or low success rates.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

Incognito doesn't work for me. Like I said in the OP, all of the workarounds I've heard of have not been working for some months now. Neither does Google search or anything else. I don't even use a mainstream browser with an incognito mode anyway, I'd have to open up a seperate browser just to read WSJ articles even if it did work. This is ridiculous.

gravypod 10y ago
You should also take into account that by the time an article makes it here there are usually multiple copies of it from other news providers. WSJ rarely has exclusive articles so it makes no sense to provide a link to WSJ when the exact same article is on some other site. The only unique pieces are usually op-eds which usually have similar articles on other popular publications as well.
- lloydde 10y ago
  This is in no way accurate. I've done this type of search almost every day in the last couple of weeks and my success rate is less than 50%. For example the Snapchat article on the IPO and voting rights did find any articles that were more than the WSJ headline.
- dublinben 10y ago
  To counter this point, when the WSJ does actually have an exclusive story or is the first to break it, we ought to recognize that. Rewarding blogspam copycats is a very bad policy.
jrs235 10y ago
I'm beginning to believe that the WSJ and others are starting to monitor the number of referrals directly from google and if it hits some threshold they turn on the paywall for the article for some period of time as the direct link from google in incognito doesn't always work for me either. "Oh look! Direct hits from google have gone up 300% (or have been hit XX times) in the last 2 minutes... turn on the sliding 5 minute paywall!"
- aembleton 10y ago
  Or they check by IP Address. They know the Google ones as they regularly crawl all of their site whereas the IP addresses of random HN users don't.
  - detaro 10y ago
    The workaround only exists because Google requires sites to serve users the same page as the crawlers, so if they do that Google should de-rank them or throw them out of the index.
    - jrs235 10y ago
      I agree. But if they are in fact using some "temporary" paywall "technology" then it would be [more] difficult for google to know and/or catch them in the act. As someone else stated in these comments: "If you start an incognito window with a Google News search for the headline and can't access it, use the "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of the search page to let Google know."
stronglikedan 10y ago
Using a mainstream browser with incognito mode is a workaround. Although, as some others have pointed out, that may no longer work either.
- ddevault 10y ago
  If you had read my comment properly, you would have seen that the "workaround" doesn't work for me, and I was saying even if it did work, it's fucking stupid to have to go to such lengths to read an article here.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  That trick used to work for me, but as of last week it doesn't. While I know it is unlikely, I wonder if WSJ has figured out a counter-trick.

irq-1 10y ago

> Let the votes do their job. Voting doesn't work if people are disenfranchised. 20% of HN discussing an article the other 80% can't read will be the end of HN. Maybe if this was a sub-reddit "community" where access to the WSJ was assumed, but HN is a general and open discussion board. (Also, when politics or people like Taleb Nissam or Paul Krugman are discussed, the voting isn't very informative.)

rubidium 10y ago
Using "disenfranchised" in this case with made up statistics of 20% and 80% is rather odd. There are _plenty_ of discussions to participate in here. WSJ make up maybe 1-2 articles on the front page per day? Can someone explain why this matters enough to even consider a banning of content? For those who don't want to see it: upvote other things! I'd much rather see a surge in voting non-mainstream media content then for HN to enforce banning. Come on people, we can be better! [[As a personal aside, I typically don't upvote and rarely read discussions about mainstream press (WSJ, NY times, WashPost,Economist) here. ]]
- lloydde 10y ago
  > WSJ make up maybe 1-2 articles on the front page per day Per day!
  - evgen 10y ago
    Damn those pesky journalists doing all the research and legwork to discover and explain information (and doing it over and over again to the point where they become a useful and trusted news source) and then expecting to get paid for it. Don't they realize that the sharing economy means I get to use all your stuff whenever I feel like it? The workaround is not difficult, deal with it.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      > The workaround is not difficult, Several people have said that the work around is not working for them. That's the whole point of the thread. It's in the OP, it's in several replies. Most people wouldn't mind paywall links if the workaround was working, but it's not working for some people.

giarc 10y ago

Upvotes != access Many people may see the headline and upvote it so it attracts some discussion in the comments.

falcolas 10y ago
Agreed; I've also seen more than a few users mention opening many links at once, upvoting all of them, then going in and reading them.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pyb 10y ago

Problem is, sometimes people just upvote based on the title.

jasonkostempski 10y ago

"If you really don't want to see WSJ articles, install/make a browser extension that does it for you." I stared something like this a few months ago and forgot about it. The general idea was to apply custom styling to regex matched page content. I got as far as hard coding everything I wanted in to JS file so there's no UI for it. Currently, it applies a black bar to links matching the patterns in the list but it could just as easily style it however you like. If anyone is interested, here's the JavaScript [0] and a basic manifest [1] to load it as a FF web extension (about:debugging -> Load Temporary Add-on). Edit: What it looks like with a match on HN [2] [0] http://pastebin.com/raw/tPJXJcM5 http://pastebin.com/raw/tPJXJcM5 [1] http://pastebin.com/raw/zi6UV9ZL http://pastebin.com/raw/zi6UV9ZL [2] http://i.imgur.com/HQVopbQ.png http://i.imgur.com/HQVopbQ.png

RodericDay 10y ago

There's something very meta about the ideology of the WSJ as conveyed to us by a WSJ subscriber. Let the vote market do its job, regulations are oppressive, don't fixate on inherent asymmetries to this decision making mechanism, etc.