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
Can we please bring back the reply to the above comment that said something like, "I've read enough of this person's comments to agree with having their flagging privileges removed"?