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Gentlemen and Gentlewoman,
I think we need a serious discussion about paywall content.
Personally, I am very annoyed by paywall content and I would prefer to don't see it on HN.
I think that paywall content are a serious treat to the openness of the community.
My take on this might be too pragmatic for your taste, but I think that as long as the paywall disappears if you enter through Google (as is usually the case), it's not more than a minor inconvenience.
I agree that content that isn't openly and globally available should be avoided.
So to verify, people should also not link to books, or to new releases of commercial software?
Please do link to good books and good software.
HN is a little like startup investing in that missing out on good posts is the worst that can happen. Bad posts suck too, but flagging and moderation work.
(To be clear, as it sounds like you might have missed this, I was being sarcastic to make a point that the argument that we should avoid "paywall" content is shortsighted and likely inconsistent even in the minds of the people complaining.)
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.
Dang's disagreement is nonsensical however:
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.
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.
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'.
Just so it's clear: this is a sure way to lose your flagging privileges on HN
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?
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"?
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.
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.
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.
Oh, I see. We're looking at different time scales. I was thinking the last couple years.
"Open Link in Incognito Window."
(Though I agree that paywalled content is a nuisance, albeit with some granularity regarding the necessity of paywalls to continued access to quality reporting.)
We've had this discussion ad nauseum. There will never be a consensus, but the HN question is settled. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=....
We all hate paywalls, but an HN without NYT, WSJ, The Economist, The New Yorker etc. would be much worse. These are sources of high-quality articles and intellectual curiosity is what HN tries to optimize for.
I'm thinking of adding the following to the FAQ to reduce the endless relitigation about paywalls that has been choking so many threads like a weed. Objections? Additions?
Is there a way to formalize a request for feature requests? It would be insane to ban paywalled content but I would very much like to see a small tag indicating paywalled content. It is easy to tell that NYT, WSJ etc are paywalled, and some even allow free viewing, however scientific papers and academia seem to have a higher proportion of such sites. Since this community is pretty STEM centic, a lot of papers, journals, and smaller subscription sites are posted here. If users could simply "tag as paywalled" it would be a timesaver and a rather nice feature. Thanks.
off-topic, but similar in notion:
Can we have a community rule that every 3rd post doesn't end up with a thread where people hyperbolize how terrible/awful/eyebleeding the design and usability of some web page is and we never get to discussing the content? At times these threads almost becomes indistinguishable from crappy satire and often end up dominating the discussion...and quite often the sites are perfectly fine and somebody just doesn't like the font choice or is trying to read a long form article on their watch or something.
Is it only paywalled outside the UK? Would be a bit odd, but I can't think why else I'm not seeing it.
I'm also in the UK and don't see a paywall. Though I just figured it was because I'm using uBlock.
many many moons ago, reddit had a special agreement with NYTimes to un-paywall any links from reddit (that neighborly deal expired a long time ago), but HN could potentially do the same magic with WSJ, NYT, Economist if someone did the dealmaking legwork.
If you're using google, type cache: in front of the link. I.e. cache:www.economist.com/link
If free software and open source software aren't the same thing... how is the content behind a paywall same as being "open"? Open means, IMO, freedom to do whatever you want with the content: One could take screenshots and/or copy paste content (more like CreativeCommons), which isn't even the point you're trying to make?
Anything that Kills Caste System in India is a welcome change. Education has not killed Caste System. In fact it actually added additional Friction with Collages famously organizing as Caste based groups.
Someone asked how this matters to US? You will see people behaving like this on American Streets When this caste mania spreads to US: https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-9...
That is a picture of Rally conducted by Caste Fanatics in support of a Leaders Son visiting US.
Just put up an Advertisement in Newspaper/TV/Radio/Facebook/Twitter/Whatsapp and hire an Upper caste/Brahmin to clean manhole/drainage in your streets;
This will fix/dilute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_in_Hinduism
I wonder what the effect of this phenomenon will be on India's famously low divorce rate. And if the divorce rate does increase, will it increase for both arranged and non-arranged marriages at the same pace?
Can young people make better choices than their parents? Or has the divorce rate been so low because parents had a bigger stake in mediating to save face?
Both factors come into play.
Arranged marriages, in nearly all aspects, emphasize communal values in place of individual wants and as such marital disharmony is worked around (or pushed under the carpet) for the sake of the group. And individual satisfaction is hardly desired by the group.
However as young people increasingly become independent, and (ironically) continue to emulate Western values, they develop little tolerance for such compromise and will readily opt for separation if necessary .. to the point that Indian divorce statistics may well come to resemble that of the US.
All the while hardly anyone questions marriage/love itself.
Indians (and Bengalis and Pakistanis) don't get divorced for three major reasons: 1) it's culturally discouraged, and even severe problems get swept under the rug so people can save face; 2) with a workforce participation rate under 30%, most Indian women have little choice but to stay in their marriages; 3) the stigma of divorce makes it very difficult for divorced women to get into other relationships.
Yes. I've often heard people say things like "Oh, divorce rates are rising, how terrible" – but that's got a certain "silent evidence" problem to it.
Divorce rates increasing doesn't NECESSARILY mean marriages are getting worse, it could also mean that people in bad marriages now have more freedom to walk away. It's a lot more complex than what it seems at first glance.
The idea of divorces increasing is a good point you bring up. I have no stats, but I've heard way too many instances of this of late. Perhaps, I'm being biased. While I am all for people being happy in their marriages, I guess I'm pretty narrow minded to think that people in arranged marriages make their marriages work (culturally enforced or not). I don't believe in perfect marriages; there are always going to be problems.
In the end, I feel it's a healthier environment for the children out of the marriage. Love marraiges are a more natural, a more realistic option over the arranged marriages setup, but I think it also needs both people to be extremely mature, not greedy, and make proactive effots towards keeping the relationship stable. That is sadly something I can't think of the people I see around, in the society we live. People are way too greedy, so it's easier for them to abandon their partners and move to 'greener pastures'.
Just for fun, it's worth pointing out that marriage itself is a human-created institution and not exactly "natural". But if we explore this rabbithole we then have to start asking what natural even means, and if man-made things are natural, and so on.
But it's an interesting point to include when thinking about such things, because it's a good reminder that most of these things are constructed and actually very context-sensitive (eg- arranged marriages were probably once more realistic in older configurations where family ties played a more important role in an individual's survival).
Haha! Yes, I know I was going to trip on that one. Let's just call it natural for convenience sake, because we've been doing it for some 30,000 years, give or take. Factually, it's not natural. It's just as natural as being civil.
Family ties are still as important today as they were back then, which is why people ought to think more about their children and their mental health when they decide to part ways for their personal greed.
I would take it one step further and suggest that love itself is human-created.
I take "natural" to generally mean instinctual (raw emotional reaction), and as such any immediate (as opposed to a prolonged social feeling) reaction of sexual desire (lust) or pair-bonding instinct (nurture) can be categorized as "natural" - as opposed to socially sanctioned feeling-stories like love or institutions like marriage.
The other day I read about "bride burning" [0]
Beyond the various non-investigative news articles, does anyone know about this in recent times or it's history?
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_burning
I heard a lot of them. Killing of bride(even though not necessarily by burning) used to be very common.
I recently intervened in a situation where a husband was wildly punching his wife in broad daylight. When I walloped him with my umbrella (yelling at him didn't make him stop), his wife got up from the ground where she was being repeatedly punched, and began attacking ME. Saying things to the effect of "how dare you intervene in our issues" and "don't dare touch my husband".
This only reflects a tiny part of the Indian population but, within some circles, Indian women will stick by their husbands sides despite ANYTHING. A saying in Hindi is "Pati dev" which roughly means "your husband is your God".
I'm not trying to insinuate anything by sharing this here except that it was an interesting (albeit anecdotal) experience that I had. I have close friends who have had arranged marriages which are thriving respectful relationships.
Suspending all internal disputes in the presence of an external foe is a common family/tribal behavior, and not exclusively Indian.
Even if she was in the middle of punching me, if you started walloping my wife with an umbrella, my frame of mind would immediately shift from wherever it was to "my wife is being attacked by an umbrella-wielding stranger."
You're right, and I wasn't saying it was a strictly Indian behaviour. But I must say that I expected relief from her, not attack. I only hit the dude once - to make him stop.