zlacker

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+(OP)
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+S3
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+k4
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+S3
If there's a workaround and you don't use it, that's up to you. You're also unable to view an article if you refuse to click on it.

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.

>>jsprog+X5
> 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

>>xiaoma+(OP)
> The recent trend in paywalling

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.

>>dang+Z8
I certainly didn't see all this paywalling back in the days of Slashdot. Whether that was due to paywalling not being a thing or to Cmdr Taco's good discretion, I can't say.

>>xiaoma+5c
Oh, I see. We're looking at different time scales. I was thinking the last couple years.

>>dang+X7
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?

>>jsprog+X5
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"?