I think one of the problems is that "paywalled" isn't always a binary thing; I can't count the number of times I've visited a link from HN and read an article, then gone to the comments to see people complaining about the paywall. And vice-versa - sometimes I find a paywalled article that none of the regular tricks seems to work for, but everybody's in the comments quoting and talking about the article. So it might not be as easy as just banning or labeling paywalled articles.
That said, it should probably be against the site guidelines to submit hard-paywalled articles; if the vast majority of the site's users can't read it, what's the point?
> if the vast majority of the site's users can't read it, what's the point?
Lots of articles from a particular paywalled publication getting submitted and upvoted could be taken as a useful signal that it's a publication worth paying for.
Comments
I think one of the problems is that "paywalled" isn't always a binary thing; I can't count the number of times I've visited a link from HN and read an article, then gone to the comments to see people complaining about the paywall. And vice-versa - sometimes I find a paywalled article that none of the regular tricks seems to work for, but everybody's in the comments quoting and talking about the article. So it might not be as easy as just banning or labeling paywalled articles.
That said, it should probably be against the site guidelines to submit hard-paywalled articles; if the vast majority of the site's users can't read it, what's the point?
> if the vast majority of the site's users can't read it, what's the point?
Lots of articles from a particular paywalled publication getting submitted and upvoted could be taken as a useful signal that it's a publication worth paying for.