[dang]

You're quoting things I didn't say. The snark-amplification mechanism of putting the most uncharitable spin you can possibly think of on someone's remarks is one of the worsts you can do in comments here. I spend a lot of time asking users not to do it to other users.

Of course the paywalls suck. Is there any user who has to deal with more of these annoyances than we ourselves do? There can't be many.

The question is the lesser of two evils. Anyone who doesn't get what a disaster it would be for HN to lose the NYT, WSJ, Economist, and New Yorker doesn't get HN in the first place.

[hueving]

I think you're over inflating the value of articles that a bunch of people can't read. If this policy is even half consistent, nobody will be able to complain when there are things posted that there is absolutely no workaround for other than paying (or having someone copy and repost). Postings like that absolutely deserve complaint IMO because it punishes those without privilege.

[dang]

> the value of articles that a bunch of people can't read

"Paywalls with workarounds" means people can read them. Obviously we care about that—we've explicitly let everyone know that users are welcome to help each other do so.

Re value, people disagree about value judgments but someone has to make the call, and it's the same now as it has always been.

I can at least tell you what it's based on: HN wants to maximize the quality of the articles on the front page and the quality of the comments in the threads. Sites like the NYT and the New Yorker increase the former. Repetitive complaining about paywalls reduces the latter. Hence the above.

[hueving]

With articles like NYT taking the place of an article without a paywall (the front page has limited real estate), all you know is that NYT articles result in crappy discussions because users have difficulty reading the article and rightly complain.

Rather than banning the crappy discussion, why not ban the articles that result in it?

[dang]

Because many of them are high-quality articles, and intellectual curiosity is what HN tries to optimize for.

Obviously the discussions on such articles aren't all crappy. Often they're good. That doesn't mean that off-topic generic tangents about paywalls aren't a problem. All generic tangents are a problem, and this was an increasingly common one.

It astonishes me how the people making objections in this discussion ignore that we're talking about articles that are possible for nearly everyone to read. That's what paywalls with workarounds means. It means readable with a bit of a nuisance.

There have been a few legitimate counterpoints—for example, if it's true that in some countries you can't google WSJ articles to read them, that's a problem. But mostly this argument has charged ahead as if we were talking about unreadable content, with lots of indignant points being made on that basis and little stopping to notice that it's false.

[hueving]

Banning people from talking about it seems rather childish though. If people are talking about something off topic it's usually because it was something jarring enough to distract from the point. "the beatings will continue until morale improves"

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).

[dang]

> so favorable to a money sucking strategy

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.

[cat9]

Thanks for the ad hominem response, it really reminds me what's great about this site.

[JadeNB]

Given that you did put in quotes things that dang didn't say, it sure seemed like dang was describing your actual actions, not saying anything about you or your intentions. (Well, maybe 'snark amplification'.)

[dang]

I don't think it was ad hominem, but it's possible that I misinterpreted your comment as snarkier than you meant it. If so, I'm sorry.

[lmm]

The ad hominem was "doesn't get HN in the first place". It's very dismissive of people who disagree with you. And it's not the first time you've responded like this.

I don't get it? No, you don't get it.

[dang]

Oh, I see now. Sorry about that. Normally I'd delete it, but in this case I suppose I'd better leave it in.

I still don't see any ad hominem, and as a statement of HN's very specific values it seems obvious to me, but you're right that I shouldn't have said it in a dismissive way.