Well if you're going to lawyer it, it's worth noting that it doesn't say what you claimed, it says "don't complain about paywalls". The parent didn't complain about paywalls, he complained about us posting articles that are hidden behind paywalls when the information is, presumably, available from open sources.
That rule also mentions that it's fine to post them as long as there is a workaround and intimates strongly that the workaround should be provided.
So, it seems when posting a paywalled article the poster should comment the workaround to stay within the spirit of the rules.
Exactly, this was the point I was (trying) to get too.
Ultimately I believe that _the majority_ of stories that will be of interest to the HN community will either be:
1. niche posts from free sources
2. More wide spread news that will be covered by every major news site, some of which are "paywalled" sites
When the latter of these two happen, where a non-niche story is published, instead of users submitting a paywalled version of the article they could instead reference one that seems to not have this issue (like this forbes article https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2018/04/21/dont-worry-... ) that covers the same content or reference the original paper with it's given flaws.
I am aware that this is by no means a perfect solution, but simply suggesting that you can use work arounds for every instance is a cure for the issue, instead of a preventative measure that I believe would be more beneficial and one we should be taking as a community.
P.S.
Just to be clear, I'm not gunning for the OP of this article, but was simply my trigger for the topic. As I said before it is an interesting article.
> instead of users submitting a paywalled version of the article they could instead reference one that seems to not have this issue
People often do this when the site is known to have an impenetrable paywall, e.g., WSJ.
But the NYT's paywall is quite easy to bypass. It usually only appears if you've accessed more than the monthly limit's worth of articles, and after that you can just use a clean browser instance.
Bear in mind that the NYT is generally regarded as among the premier news sources in the world. (This is not to say that it's to my personal taste. It often isn't, but that's a separate issue.) But its articles, particularly those with an opiniative or analytical flavour, will often be preferred due to this brand perception that the NYT has built.
Where there is a better article on a topic, people can and do point to it here and encourage the moderators to update the URL.
But the HN community would never want a lower-quality article on a topic to be given preference due to it having no paywall. If that article is the best one on the topic, as long as the paywall can be bypassed, that is the article HN wants listed.
> People often do this when the site is known to have an impenetrable paywall, e.g., WSJ.
Not in my recent experience, which was my reason for this comment
> But the NYT's paywall is quite easy to bypass.
As I said before, why force cures on an issue instead of simply acting on preventative measures in the first instance?
More to the point, how would someone bypass this if they used an app for HN? There's no "private mode" in these and simply asking people to delete the apps cache every time they hit this problem is again a cure not a preventative measure.
> Bear in mind that the NYT is generally regarded as among the premier news sources in the world.
> But the HN community would never want a lower-quality article on a topic to be given preference due to it having no paywall.
Discussing the relative "qualities" of news outlets is a discussion in and of itself, but as I also showed there is a Forbes article that echoes many of the same points. So I don't think this piece of analysis was unique to the NYT and is of such great stature that Forbes would be arbitrarily inferior to NYT?
Are you suggesting it's better for the community, even if some can't read the article, to post a paywalled one rather than one everybody can read? I thought the point was to share news for _everybody_ on here?
The problem is that you’re conflating two issues that should be separate: paywalls vs article/source quality.
The article posted on HN should be the best generally-accessible article on that topic, end of story. In this case, if the Forbes article is better, that's the one that should be here. If the NYT version is better, that's the one that should be here. If they're about on par with one another, then the first one to be posted and upvoted should remain, as nobody would want a norm in which the moderators unilaterally change a submission to a different source from what was originally submitted and upvoted by the community.
If it has a paywall, the only question is, is there a workaround that would allow anyone to access it. In the case of the NYT, the answer seems to be yes; you just need a browser instance that hasn't exceeded the NYT's monthly limit. I haven't heard anyone ever say it's impossible for them to access NYT content. Just sometimes inconvenient, if you need to open a different browser window. For me, if I'm on mobile, that might mean switching from my usual Chrome instance to Safari or Firefox. But I've never found a case where I can't access it. It's a little inconvenient, but it's OK. Other people have different standards of convenience. E.g., some people disable all Javascript and get annoyed that a site won't render for them. So you can never meet everyone's standards.
I totally understand that you're well-intentioned and are wanting to find a solution that is best for the broader HN community.
But please understand that those of us who have been on HN a long time (12 years in my case) have seen this topic thrashed out repeatedly (sometimes multiple times per week). We've all discussed an thought about it enough that we understand that the policy the HN mods have arrived at and written into the guidelines is a variant of the old adage: the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Other policies would lead to scenarios in which there are arguments amongst the community and mods over whether an arguably-slightly-less-good-but-non-paywalled version should be favored over an arguably-slightly-better-but-weakly-paywalled version. Or alternately, any sites with paywalls, even porous ones like NYT, should be banned altogether. None of these outcomes are clearly better than the one we have.
I know imperfect solutions are hard to stomach sometimes!
I'm not really lawyering about this. Hacker News doesn't really do paywall discussions, since they're off topic. I don't have a particular opinion on this issue but I do care about minimizing off-topic discussion, hence why I felt like I could remind Browun of the FAQ.
> So, it seems when posting a paywalled article the poster should comment the workaround to stay within the spirit of the rules.
Exactly: Hacker News encourages posting a workaround rather than discussing paywalls in general. If the workaround is of suitable quality/authority I think it generally replaces the link anyways.
Okay, then I encourage everyone to flag every single paywall article posted. They are off-topic, because you cannot read them. The FAQ rule is ridiculous.
How is flagging a submission for something site rules and moderators explicitly say is acceptable on HN not misusing the flag feature, which is for things that are not acceptable?
A pay-walled submission being acceptable on a news site when people likely do not spend a lengthy amount of time and likely do not want a hassle trying to consume information seems like a bad business decision.
