Ask HN: Why HN lets sharing content that is behind a paywall e.g. WSJ?

Yep, that convention could have really worked.

The domain is visible next to the submission. Tags like [video] and [pdf] are useful when it isn't completely obvious but the WSJ domain is already strong enough of an indication to check the comments for alternatives imho if that's something you need.

That wouldn't be appropriate because articles with hard paywalls aren't allowed on HN.

If it's on the front page of HN, it's a signal that the article can be accessed by anyone.

It may need a workaround, which someone will post in the comments.

If no workaround exists (e.g. using http://archive.is/ or https://outline.com/), the article should be flagged and removed from the front page.

The FAQ covers this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

from OP:

> I frustrate when I clicked to a title or entry and when I go to the tab I see that I need to pay for a subscription to see the content. I think this creates a great struggle in an open community like HN.

By presenting a barrier to entry for accessing the content, the volume of discussion is reduced since a smaller portion of the community can get to it. This is particularly undesirable when a free alternative may exist.

The quality of the discussion may also reduce, as the non-subscribers can only respond to commenters without benefit of context of the original material.

Should enough of these posts exist, the effects could impact the community at-large; resulting in a decrease in diversity of opinion, and the popularity and relevance of HN as a site. This, in turn, could give rise to, or cause a traffic shift towards, more open competitors.

Can I make a feature request to have the non paywalled version as a separate link next to the post? Seems like there are a fair number of sites that this could be generated for automatically(wsj etc.)