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.
I agree that content that isn't openly and globally available should be avoided.
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.
(Though I agree that paywalled content is a nuisance, albeit with some granularity regarding the necessity of paywalls to continued access to quality reporting.)
>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.
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'.
We've had this discussion ad nauseum. There will never be a consensus, but the HN question is settled. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=....
We all hate paywalls, but an HN without NYT, WSJ, The Economist, The New Yorker etc. would be much worse. These are sources of high-quality articles and intellectual curiosity is what HN tries to optimize for.
I'm thinking of adding the following to the FAQ to reduce the endless relitigation about paywalls that has been choking so many threads like a weed. Objections? Additions?
1. Paywalled articles are ok if there's a workaround.
2. It's ok to ask for a workaround in the thread and share one.
3. Generic paywall complaints about HN stories are off topic.The choice is between two bad options: having to do a bit of work and losing many substantive articles. For HN, it's obvious which is the lesser evil. The policy has been the status quo here forever.
Just so it's clear: this is a sure way to lose your flagging privileges on HN
HN is a little like startup investing in that missing out on good posts is the worst that can happen. Bad posts suck too, but flagging and moderation work.
Is there a recent trend? The situation has seemed stable to me for a long time.
The last big shift was the New Yorker switching to a ponywall (i.e. letting incognito windows work) which, whatever it did for their economics, made the web and HN way better. Nautil.us recently introduced a paywall, but they love HN and are letting HN traffic through.
Someone asked how this matters to US? You will see people behaving like this on American Streets When this caste mania spreads to US: https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-9...
That is a picture of Rally conducted by Caste Fanatics in support of a Leaders Son visiting US.
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?
Can we have a community rule that every 3rd post doesn't end up with a thread where people hyperbolize how terrible/awful/eyebleeding the design and usability of some web page is and we never get to discussing the content? At times these threads almost becomes indistinguishable from crappy satire and often end up dominating the discussion...and quite often the sites are perfectly fine and somebody just doesn't like the font choice or is trying to read a long form article on their watch or something.
Can young people make better choices than their parents? Or has the divorce rate been so low because parents had a bigger stake in mediating to save face?
Arranged marriages, in nearly all aspects, emphasize communal values in place of individual wants and as such marital disharmony is worked around (or pushed under the carpet) for the sake of the group. And individual satisfaction is hardly desired by the group.
However as young people increasingly become independent, and (ironically) continue to emulate Western values, they develop little tolerance for such compromise and will readily opt for separation if necessary .. to the point that Indian divorce statistics may well come to resemble that of the US.
All the while hardly anyone questions marriage/love itself.
Beyond the various non-investigative news articles, does anyone know about this in recent times or it's history?
In the end, I feel it's a healthier environment for the children out of the marriage. Love marraiges are a more natural, a more realistic option over the arranged marriages setup, but I think it also needs both people to be extremely mature, not greedy, and make proactive effots towards keeping the relationship stable. That is sadly something I can't think of the people I see around, in the society we live. People are way too greedy, so it's easier for them to abandon their partners and move to 'greener pastures'.
Divorce rates increasing doesn't NECESSARILY mean marriages are getting worse, it could also mean that people in bad marriages now have more freedom to walk away. It's a lot more complex than what it seems at first glance.
Just for fun, it's worth pointing out that marriage itself is a human-created institution and not exactly "natural". But if we explore this rabbithole we then have to start asking what natural even means, and if man-made things are natural, and so on.
But it's an interesting point to include when thinking about such things, because it's a good reminder that most of these things are constructed and actually very context-sensitive (eg- arranged marriages were probably once more realistic in older configurations where family ties played a more important role in an individual's survival).
This only reflects a tiny part of the Indian population but, within some circles, Indian women will stick by their husbands sides despite ANYTHING. A saying in Hindi is "Pati dev" which roughly means "your husband is your God".
I'm not trying to insinuate anything by sharing this here except that it was an interesting (albeit anecdotal) experience that I had. I have close friends who have had arranged marriages which are thriving respectful relationships.
Family ties are still as important today as they were back then, which is why people ought to think more about their children and their mental health when they decide to part ways for their personal greed.
Even if she was in the middle of punching me, if you started walloping my wife with an umbrella, my frame of mind would immediately shift from wherever it was to "my wife is being attacked by an umbrella-wielding stranger."
> Just for fun, it's worth pointing out that marriage itself is a human-created institution and not exactly "natural".
I would take it one step further and suggest that love itself is human-created.
I take "natural" to generally mean instinctual (raw emotional reaction), and as such any immediate (as opposed to a prolonged social feeling) reaction of sexual desire (lust) or pair-bonding instinct (nurture) can be categorized as "natural" - as opposed to socially sanctioned feeling-stories like love or institutions like marriage.
This will fix/dilute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_in_Hinduism
