If an article is from a brand-new source that uses a kind of paywall you've never encountered before, then hopefully someone will comment with a workaround. If not, you can ask. Maybe you could even subscribe to publications you like, read regularly, and want to support.
Since almost all paywalled articles are from the WSJ, the Economist, or the NYT, this shouldn't happen to you very often.
Eventually you learn these things, from living life (including reading HN for awhile). And if you can't read an article because there's no workaround, or because you don't know of a workaround:
- Just don't read the article.
- Subscribe. If you can't/won't afford it, then see above, or see below.
- Search for other sources of the information. And post them, it adds to the discussion. Most articles worth taking up space, particularly on paywalled sites, are worth that space in other venues. Almost nothing is exclusive, not after a day anyway.
In the WSJ case, I've noticed that yahoo often prints the article verbatim.
That's one option. You can also google the title or URL of the article (this is the most common workaround); or you can search the comments for the word 'paywall'; or you can purchase a membership or subscription for the paywalled site; or you can skip reading the article.
So all I need to do is try every possible option? And even then it may fail (scientific journals, newspaper archives, etc)?
The links are just huge wastes of time. A prominent tag attached to the article would be ok, but in the absence of any other feature to avoid these time sinks, it makes sense to flag the articles to save others from additional wastage.
If an article is from a brand-new source that uses a kind of paywall you've never encountered before, then hopefully someone will comment with a workaround. If not, you can ask. Maybe you could even subscribe to publications you like, read regularly, and want to support.
Since almost all paywalled articles are from the WSJ, the Economist, or the NYT, this shouldn't happen to you very often.
Eventually you learn these things, from living life (including reading HN for awhile). And if you can't read an article because there's no workaround, or because you don't know of a workaround:
- Just don't read the article.
- Subscribe. If you can't/won't afford it, then see above, or see below.
- Search for other sources of the information. And post them, it adds to the discussion. Most articles worth taking up space, particularly on paywalled sites, are worth that space in other venues. Almost nothing is exclusive, not after a day anyway.
In the WSJ case, I've noticed that yahoo often prints the article verbatim.
Personally, I just google the key words in the headline and find it. I meant for others who have not had the benefit of experience.
Yes, over time you learn things.
That's one option. You can also google the title or URL of the article (this is the most common workaround); or you can search the comments for the word 'paywall'; or you can purchase a membership or subscription for the paywalled site; or you can skip reading the article.
So all I need to do is try every possible option? And even then it may fail (scientific journals, newspaper archives, etc)?
The links are just huge wastes of time. A prominent tag attached to the article would be ok, but in the absence of any other feature to avoid these time sinks, it makes sense to flag the articles to save others from additional wastage.
The links are a waste of time to you. Other people have useful subscriptions or know the work-arounds and those links are useful to them.
Of the flood of links posted to /newest the paywalled links are nowhere near the most problematic.
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Or we can stop showing paywalled links to people and not support this crap as a community.
It's either this or ads, and ads don't work anymore because people use adblock.
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I don't agree with the moderation decision, but given what this site is 'supposed' to be I suggest you step up your game.
In practice, this is memoized per site. Few HN readers don't know to open incognito windows for NYT pieces.
Chrome also allows cookie blocking, no need to interrupt your browsing workflow.
Good point. We don't use such techniques when moderating because it seems important not to insulate ourselves from the typical reader experience.