Should HN ban paywalled articles?

Question

josephcsible · Accepted Answer

I think the current policy of allowing them as long as there's a workaround is fine. What do you think is wrong with that?

PenguinCoder · Answer

No. There's good content on some of those articles. We shouldn't hamper discussion because some users hit a paywall. Other users have subscriptions and get value from HN on the topic. There are also a variety of workarounds that technically savvy users of this site can employ.

fhaldridge7 · Answer

I think it would be great to have a paywall tag. Usually I click on an article on HN only to discover that I can't read it because of a paywall. I then check the comments if someone has posted a link to a workaround. If there is no link I have to find out how to avoid paywall articles. Nowadays I just try to remember which sites have paywalls and avoid them but this doesn't scale well

tsjq · Answer

this topic is covered in FAQ : https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.htmland here in more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

Comevius · Answer

"Show me a 10ft paywall, I'll show you a 12ft ladder" - 12ft.io

luke2m · Answer

How about adding a (paywall) to the end of posts like most people do (video) or (pdf) now?

mistermithras · Answer

Give me some climbing spikes and 10 good men and I'll breach that paywall. ;-)