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.
HN generally eschews tags, and I fear having to maintain this (edit: I mean manually). But we'll think about it.
It could be an optional tag like [dead] or [flagged].
But those are automated. I've added "manually" above to clarify why I fear this.
Would it be practical to introduce a tag system which lets each user manage their own list?
You can do this yourself with a userscript
Working on this now, no ETA though.
Done. It's terrible. In its own repo so I can have pull requests that add extra sites.
Hit the "Raw" button on https://github.com/voltagex/hackernews-paywalltag/blob/maste... - linking directly is not a good user experience for anyone using GreaseMonkey
This would be my preferred option.
I've got a specific use case that's not applicable to most HN readers - here in .au Popular Science links are useless - they do a geo redirect based on your ip address, which redirects me to the homepage of the .com.au version of their site, which in general doesn't even have the original article available...
I'm not sure how configurable userscripts are, but I'd love to add this.
I don't really want to write RES for HackerNews, but it's an interesting project for the last week of my holidays.
Thanks, really appreciate you giving it consideration would be awesome. Cheers. Also, couldn't it just be as simple as adding a "tag as paywalled" button next to the flag option. Then, if 3 people, (or a reputation heuristic meets a threshold) a small wall icon appears after the article. It doesn't have to crank up gravity or affect the post.
Thank you for your contributions to this site.
I wrote a user script so you don't have to.
I like this idea. Or maybe a checkbox at submission - "this is paywalled" - and have HN offer a link to the Google result for the title of the page instead of a direct link if the box is checked.
This would be perfect. Anyone else remember those "[scribd]" links that used to be next to PDF submissions? There could be a "[google]" link to the Google redirect page (google.com/url?…).
Submitters don't always know if something is paywalled
Done: https://github.com/voltagex/hackernews-paywalltag/blob/maste... - click "Raw" and install it with GreaseMonkey
Yeah, I'd like to see this as well.
It would be also nice if HK incorporated a filter, so people can choose if they want to see posts to paywalled articles or not.
Just click on the link and you'll find out if it is paywalled or not.
Why should someone else spend all the effort to code up a solution to your problem when you believe it is beneath you to click on a link and find out for yourself?
I, and many others it seems, would appreciate it. I simply asked if s/he would consider it as a feature request because although a small gripe, it is quite annoying. It wouldn't be as bothersome if it were not for mobile. Waiting 5+ seconds for several JS libraries to get served to the client, then after about a paragraph of reading a paralyzing modal covers the entire screen asking to subscribe to read the full article. Not so much well known "reputable" sites like wsj, nyt, exonomist, but others. There is limited popup blocking and thus sometimes the page needs to be manually shut off, so one must then find the link and try to find a non-paywalled version in google, possibly repeating that process instead of knowingly bypassing the article for the comments and following the top comment of a helpful community member.
It was a polite feature request, asked civilly.