Ask HN: Should HN have a toggle to show/hide paywall articles?

5 points by jeremyperson 5 years ago | 6 comments

I think the logistics of this are too onerous for a site like HN. Even Reddit doesn't have anything like this. Between search engines/crawlers getting a different page than normal visitors, X free articles a month, and per-articles paywalls (such as sites that have removed the paywall for all COVID-19-related content) I think there is no easy way to tell if a site has paywall or not.

You could probably create a list of sites that have a paywall anywhere but I'm not sure if that would really provide a huge benefit.

For me, if a site has a paywall and I'm not willing to pay for it then I'll often read the comments to determine if I want to consider paying for it (normally only after I run into the same wall multiple times) or if I want to go looking on the internet for other reporting on the topic.

trboyden 5 years ago |

Taken to another level, why is HN showing articles from news sites at all, when it's own guidelines say if media would cover it, it's probably off topic?

greenyoda 5 years ago | |

> when it's own guidelines say if media would cover it

Actually, the guidelines say: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic". And also: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is OK.[1]

Long-form articles on news sites usually have much more intellectual content than TV news.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

brownbat 5 years ago | |

I'm with you insofar as I'd prefer slightly fewer, but I have seen some important topics with unique discussions here. I think that's why the guidelines say "probably" instead of making it a bright line.

Even if it's not exactly where I'd set the dial, it's probably a rough average of the community, and the consolation prize is that controversial stories rapidly bury themselves.

rat_melter 5 years ago |

Yes.

jppope 5 years ago |

Yes HN should hide all the paywall articles. It wouldn't be that hard to do since most of them are NYtimes, WashPost, Medium, etc.

Hell, I'll help build the feature its that much of a nuisance...