zlacker

>>jimsoj+(OP)
Gentlemen and Gentlewoman,

I think we need a serious discussion about paywall content.

Personally, I am very annoyed by paywall content and I would prefer to don't see it on HN.

I think that paywall content are a serious treat to the openness of the community.

>>siscia+W3
I agree and used to flag them for that reason. Dang disagrees though and s/he's the moderator, so I stopped: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9717601

The recent trend in paywalling is a negative one but it's not easy for any one aggregator (who isn't google) to punish the behavior. Consequently, a lot of a great content is paywalled.

>>xiaoma+p7
Dang's disagreement is nonsensical however:

>You should flag stories because of content, not provenance.

How can I flag a story because of its content when I am unable to view the content? If a story has no content for me, I will likely flag it, sorry.

>>jsprog+hb
Many paywalled articles provide a way of getting around the paywall, for SEO purposes. Open it in a private window, or search it on Google, or in the case of Quora articles, add the share link. On some sites the "paywall" is a modal you can just delete in the browser. It's not really that nonsensical - those methods or alternative links will wind up being posted in a thread anyway. And a thread that doesn't provide any way of discussing the content should die on its own, because the comments will be nothing but complaints about the paywall.

>>krapp+Jb
Yeah, I'm not going to spend my time trying to figure out how to exploit a publishers' SEO marketing scheme just so that I can move through the magic referrer to get to the content at a URL.

If there is an easy alternative posted and the linkbait sounds compelling enough, I might try it.

Otherwise, it might get a flag for 'no content at this link'.

>>jsprog+md
> Otherwise, it might get a flag for 'no content at this link'

Just so it's clear: this is a sure way to lose your flagging privileges on HN

>>dang+mf
Can you link me to HN's flagging rules and other moderation policies?

Are you seriously suggesting that someone from YCombinator will remove an account's flagging privileges because the account flagged links which did not point to any meaningful content?

What should we be flagging? Links to content that we disagree with?