6 ms·

anyone else sick of seeing pay walled links on the front page of HN?

yzzxy 12y ago
No. I'm sick of these comments. Articles from sources like Washington Post, NYT, and The Economist, which are often high quality, constantly get branded with some form of this complaint. It is so easy to avoid the paywall: any major browser's incognito mode will do it, and you can just subscribe. Magazines and newspaper subscriptions are often on sale for free or extremely low prices. There are some walls that suck - Quora comes to mind - but when it's this easy to read the article, you're just adding noise by complaining.
lettergram 12y ago
There are quite a few plugins, and techniques which can get around paywalls. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-york-times-paywall/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-york-times-paywall/
serf 12y ago
Yeah, it's obnoxious to assume that the rest of the community would be a member of 'the club' when linking articles.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I don't have an NYT subscription or use any sort of workaround to access NYT pages, so I am not a member of any 'club'. You can view something like 20 stories a month before they ask you to subscribe, and I don't feel bad about posting an interesting story from a site that uses a paywall once or twice month.
  - serf 12y ago
    > and I don't feel bad about posting an interesting story from a site that uses a paywall once or twice month. I don't want you to feel bad, I just want you to know that I think that it's obnoxious, and not very considerate towards others to expect them to bob-and-weave through pay-walls. > You can view something like 20 stories a month before they ask you to subscribe Sure, that's how it is at the moment. Next month it'll be ten views, a few months after 3 views, and so on, (effectively further reducing the archival worth of news publication links) Also, how do you know that I haven't yet exceeded my monthly allotment? Posting paid content excludes the poor who either lack the know-how to do so or refuse to side-step the pay-walls from discussion of the article until someone either copy/pastes the important parts or a freely available source is linked, and I just want people to be aware of that.
    - mkaziz 12y ago
      I reckon there's a fair chance that if you're on HackerNews, you know you can circumvent a paywall by going incognito ...
    - alexqgb 12y ago
      Wait, you think people shouldn't post and discuss interesting stuff because you're to cheap to help underwrite the (very reasonable) cost of decent journalism?! I'm sorry, but this is a news site. People come here to read and discuss relevant news. And while this may come as news to you, those articles don't write themselves for free. You want to lecture somebody on etiquette? Go find a journalist and tell them how "rude" they're being by expecting payment for their work. Find their editors, while you're at it, and see if they're willing to discuss their "entitlement issues". If you haven't had your head ripped off maybe you can tell us how the conversation went.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      No one is expecting you to do anything. They are providing a link to something they feel others might find interesting. You can choose to feel ungrateful for that, that's your right. But I disagree with your choice.
  - eksith 12y ago
    > You can view something like 20 stories a month 10 stories a month. Also, even though you may only post one or two as you say from these sites, others do the same adding to that total E.G. wsj.com Which doesn't allow viewing at all unless you browse in from a search engine or subscribe.
    - bob917 12y ago
      Clear your cookies after 10 dumbass.
- teh_klev 12y ago
  I think you need to recalibrate the point at which you measure something as "obnoxious", your usage is a tad hyperbolic.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mikeash 12y ago
They're trivial to bypass for the technically literate, which group I'd expect every HN reader to belong to. If you can't be arsed, fine, but don't waste your time writing annoyed comments about it either.

yzzxy 12y ago

No. I'm sick of these comments. Articles from sources like Washington Post, NYT, and The Economist, which are often high quality, constantly get branded with some form of this complaint. It is so easy to avoid the paywall: any major browser's incognito mode will do it, and you can just subscribe. Magazines and newspaper subscriptions are often on sale for free or extremely low prices. There are some walls that suck - Quora comes to mind - but when it's this easy to read the article, you're just adding noise by complaining.

lettergram 12y ago

There are quite a few plugins, and techniques which can get around paywalls. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-york-times-paywall/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-york-times-paywall/

serf 12y ago

Yeah, it's obnoxious to assume that the rest of the community would be a member of 'the club' when linking articles.

anigbrowl 12y ago
I don't have an NYT subscription or use any sort of workaround to access NYT pages, so I am not a member of any 'club'. You can view something like 20 stories a month before they ask you to subscribe, and I don't feel bad about posting an interesting story from a site that uses a paywall once or twice month.
- serf 12y ago
  > and I don't feel bad about posting an interesting story from a site that uses a paywall once or twice month. I don't want you to feel bad, I just want you to know that I think that it's obnoxious, and not very considerate towards others to expect them to bob-and-weave through pay-walls. > You can view something like 20 stories a month before they ask you to subscribe Sure, that's how it is at the moment. Next month it'll be ten views, a few months after 3 views, and so on, (effectively further reducing the archival worth of news publication links) Also, how do you know that I haven't yet exceeded my monthly allotment? Posting paid content excludes the poor who either lack the know-how to do so or refuse to side-step the pay-walls from discussion of the article until someone either copy/pastes the important parts or a freely available source is linked, and I just want people to be aware of that.
  - mkaziz 12y ago
    I reckon there's a fair chance that if you're on HackerNews, you know you can circumvent a paywall by going incognito ...
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    Wait, you think people shouldn't post and discuss interesting stuff because you're to cheap to help underwrite the (very reasonable) cost of decent journalism?! I'm sorry, but this is a news site. People come here to read and discuss relevant news. And while this may come as news to you, those articles don't write themselves for free. You want to lecture somebody on etiquette? Go find a journalist and tell them how "rude" they're being by expecting payment for their work. Find their editors, while you're at it, and see if they're willing to discuss their "entitlement issues". If you haven't had your head ripped off maybe you can tell us how the conversation went.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    No one is expecting you to do anything. They are providing a link to something they feel others might find interesting. You can choose to feel ungrateful for that, that's your right. But I disagree with your choice.
- eksith 12y ago
  > You can view something like 20 stories a month 10 stories a month. Also, even though you may only post one or two as you say from these sites, others do the same adding to that total E.G. wsj.com Which doesn't allow viewing at all unless you browse in from a search engine or subscribe.
  - bob917 12y ago
    Clear your cookies after 10 dumbass.
teh_klev 12y ago
I think you need to recalibrate the point at which you measure something as "obnoxious", your usage is a tad hyperbolic.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mikeash 12y ago

They're trivial to bypass for the technically literate, which group I'd expect every HN reader to belong to. If you can't be arsed, fine, but don't waste your time writing annoyed comments about it either.