It astonishes me how this policy is so favorable to a money sucking strategy yet it ignores the myriad of other usability complaints that frequently pop up (e.g. Why is/isn't this on medium, wtf is this scroll jacking, why is the js so big, why is the font so small/big).
None of the workarounds cost anything—that's what "workaround" means. Your comment is a good example of what I was talking about: indignation blithely proceeding on a false premise without stopping to consider it. The fact is that these articles are freely accessible with a bit of work. Had you said "time-sucking", you'd have had a point.
> ignores the myriad of other usability complaints that frequently pop up
You're right that those are also off-topic and mostly of little value. But we can't come up with a complete set of rules to cover everything under all cases. Even if we could, the community would reject it, and even if they didn't, what a miserable way to live.