Ask HN: The WSJ paywall workaround no longer works. Why are their links allowed?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
The official guidelines only permit paywalls with a viable workaround and the WSJ workarounds have all stopped working for many people, myself included. I'm getting pretty tired of clicking links and getting a headline + 12 words.
Before someone asks, I don't think the WSJ has earned a subscription from me. But that's beside the point - isn't it now in violation of HN's rules?
103 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadIt's just paywalls as a particular implementation of monetizing news that I'm opposed to.
I'd say the same applies if it isn't optional. They just go somewhere else, mostly.
There is no rule that people have to comment on articles they can't read. Seems backwards to forbid interested people from linking to and discussing an article in earnest just to reduce posting from bullshitters.
Perhaps in a sense, but many things that are discouraged by the rules (including paywalled articles without effective workarounds) are discouraged because they are observed to contribute to undesirable user behavior to a degree that responsibility g tomthe individual undesirable behaviors reactively is an inadequate remedy.
Workarounds help, but if they aren't available (or not working any longer), the content isn't accessible for a lot of the international HN community. So, in this case I'd personally prefer another (non-paywalled) source for the topic or just no HN entry at all if no alternative is available.
It makes little sense to ban discussions among the set of users who can and are willing to read the content.
A couple of things I wonder: A) maybe is a rolling change, and not yet complete; or B) perhaps the goal is to disrupt it enough to make it not reliable, yet functional enough for plausible deniability.
The end result though, is that I read less of the WSJ. I'm sympathetic to the need for paying subscribers, but I've already subb'ed to the NYT, so if I run into unavoidable paywalls at other sources, the end result is that I'll read less of those sources.
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.
The only unique pieces are usually op-eds which usually have similar articles on other popular publications as well.
"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!"
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."
While I know it is unlikely, I wonder if WSJ has figured out a counter-trick.
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.)
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. ]]
Per day!
The workaround is not difficult, deal with it.
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.
The discussion, as Dan pointed out, is about whether articles behind paywalls, that can no longer be penetrated using the usual tricks, hacks and incantations have any place on the site if they can't be read by the majority of the community.
Oh and this:
>"deal with it"
Really? Please contain your unwarranted indignation.
The problem is the workaround doesn't work for what is clearly a large percentage of this forums population
1-2 articles on the front page per day is a lot.
To answer your main question though, while I think banning wsj.com would be heavy-handed, I'd be in favor of penalizing the domain so its articles are less likely to reach the front page and stay on it for so long.
I think the reason people are having issue with it is that the topics themselves tend to be interesting, but without access to the article, participating in the discussion becomes difficult. This can be rather frustrating for people.
I know this first-hand because the incognito "trick" used to work for me, but no longer does for some reason. So I find myself effectively blocked out of the conversations.
That said, iirc, someone often helpfully posts the text of the article in such cases. Why go through the effort of banning something when either a) someone will continue to do that, or b) interest/upvotes in paywalled stories will die naturally?
Many people may see the headline and upvote it so it attracts some discussion in the comments.
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 [1] http://pastebin.com/raw/zi6UV9ZL [2] http://i.imgur.com/HQVopbQ.png
Let the vote market do its job, regulations are oppressive, don't fixate on inherent asymmetries to this decision making mechanism, etc.
It works sometimes, but other times it won't work even with a Google Search referrer in an incognito tab.
My frustration with hard-core paywall sites is that most of the community is blocked (or has to jump through hoops) to read the content.
Hacker news is a forum for discussing topics. How can you possible discuss an article you can't read? You can, however, discuss a piece of software based on it's intended purpose.
> I was doing this on the now defunct Cryptsy with the popular alt coins. Using relatively basic exponential moving average calculations. There just really wasn't enough volume to be doing it constantly. I was lucky to get a few trades in a day that made sense. I made money, and lost money. Basically breaking even. Mostly just a learning exercise. At this point though, all of the big players are getting their hands in. Not really worth it anymore.
(from "High-Speed Traders Are Taking Over Bitcoin")
pay up :-D
I agree with OP.
I believe the paywall is turned on and off consistently for all clients, probably not violating terms.
IMO it's not a big deal though, as I've turned to Bloomberg for most of my market news. My health has also improved considering that I no longer subject myself to skimming through the WSJ comments section.
HN lists the root domain right next to the link.
EDIT: It could be argued that the upvote system would take care of that naturally (if only few users are able to access it, few would upvote it), but I can understand why it could be considered an issue.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.