None of the results on the first page of google contain more than the first few sentences of the article. I think I got the gist of the article from those two sentences, but it is kind of annoying to not have the details or nuance that I'm sure is present in the rest of the article.
Given the number of WSJ articles I've seen recently, I am getting suspicious that one of the following is happening:
1. A lot of HNers upvoting articles without reading them
2. HNers are getting past the paywall (illegally)
3. The WSJ staff is upvoting their own articles to get a page view boost (and thus a few more ad dollars)
Of course, there could just be more people on HN that pay for the WSJ than I thought.
> 2. HNers are getting past the paywall (illegally)
It's not illegal to bypass a paywall by Googling the article. They literally programmed the paywall to work that way. It's how I read (and upvoted) the article.
If Googling it doesn't let you get past the paywall, try incognito.
The web link apparently fails for a lot of these now.
I don't think it's unreasonable to be annoyed by links that require a subscription or payment to view.
I think a good compromise would be some sort of [Pay] tag on the link.
Edit - it's also hard to have an honest discussion about an article if you don't have a subscription to that site. That requires a bunch of extra work (getting the subscription) just to fairly participate in the discussion here.
Maybe that's fine, up to the HN community to decide.
I dearly hope that they don't. This is valuable content and we shouldn't penalize it just because you're too lazy to click a single additional time.
There's literally a "web" link you can click on HN to pre-populate the Google query for you. How can you possible object to that?
I have to assume you simply have an ideological opposition to writers being paid and thus oppose the inclusion of quality content on HN.
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