Should we use [paywall] tag where applicable? Idea shamelessly stolen from petercooper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16859287 With the grow of paywalled content getting to the first page, could we please start marking it somehow? It could help avoid disappointment when a link leads to an inaccessible content. |
If an article is paywalled and I don't have any indication about this, I would open the link, notice it's paywalled and then decide whether to pay or not. If a tag is present, this just moves the decision early in the process.
So, again, how would not using such a tag help support high quality journalism?
If we only have the title in the HN feed chances are lower that we will buy the content instead of simply scrolling by. Since the latter that takes less effort.
We humans don't always make rational choices, so nudging us in the direction of paying for content – if we want to support payed content – will of course increase the amount we spend on content.
What about geographically restricted content (parts of BBC.co.uk)?
What about pages that beg for donations, either extremely politely (theGuardian.com) or more aggressively (Wikipedia.org)?
The people submitting the article don't always know it's paywalled. Either they have a subscription; or they haven't hit their article limit this month; or the article is free for a few days and paywalled later.
So any tagging would be inconsistent.
I just close articles that are paywalled
But what am I saying? Tagging them will probably just draw people in faster to complain about it harder.