> Paywalls pose a serious problem to discussion sites such as HN where it's hoped (often in vain, but still) that all commenters have read the linked document i

> Paywalls pose a serious problem to discussion sites such as HN where it's hoped (often in vain, but still) that all commenters have read the linked document in its entirety. Well, do you want to read 20 comments on HN by people who have read the linked document in its entirety, commenting about the linked document, or do you want to read 100 comments on HN whining about Medium.com? Yes, paywalls are annoying, but comments saying "WWAAAAAAHHHH MEDUMB" are not good comments, they aren't interesting reading, they don't add to the dicussion on whatever the linked document is, or on the topic of paywalls. IMO they aren't on-topic here under the guidelines[1] "Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." (Medium.com having a paywall is unrelated to putting an rPi in a webcam, paywalls are a generic tangent) and "Please don't post shallow dismissals" ("No" is not a thoughtful substantive dismissal) and maybe "please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting." - requiring a login is too common an annoyance to be interesting. In particular to this article and your slatestarcodex link, this webcam article isn't clickbait with zero payoff like the "why are men pointing guns at their dicks" reference, this is a story of something technical that someone did, along with many links relating to the parts they bought, the guides they followed, gif of what it looks like when it's working, links to source code and 3D printer models used. It's not the most technical post ever, but it's incredibly good and relevant to HN compared to a clickbait article on US political social media memes. I don't enjoy paywalls, and I don't pay for them, but this is what they should be for - if this guy gets a few cents for writing this post about an interesting real project which took a couple of hundred dollars and some decent chunk of hours of design, electronics, hardware assembling and software work to do, then good. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html