Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic

176 points

11 years ago

Publications like NYT, WSJ, the Economist, and the New Yorker have paywalls that leave ways for readers to work around them. Such stories are OK to post to Hacker News. Yes, it sucks, but losing that many substantive articles would suck worse. In the future, when someone doesn't understand this, please direct them to this thread or to HN's FAQ [1], which now makes this explicit.

Complaints about paywalls are off topic, so please don't post them. The spirit of HN is to discuss specific articles and avoid generic rehashing. Arguments about The Paywall Question are all the same. For an example of what we want to avoid, see [2]. For more on our thinking, see [3].

It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. But please do this without going on about paywalls. Focus on the content.

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

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178012

3. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...

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