Paywall Considered a Valid Downvote Reason
I recently had a poor experience I'd like to share. I posted a snap to an article by Newsweek here and to my dismay I had received a down vote. This is unusual obviously so I took a peek at the comments to find one of the readers was stuck behind a paywall that Newsweek has baked into their site.
This isn't a normal Paywall. I am not a subscriber to Newsweek and I didn't post a link to an article expecting readers to be prompted to cough up their hard earned money to read my linked article. What's frustrating is Newsweek has it set up to block out readers after they have read more than four articles on their site less they pay for more. There's no warning for this.
As a content aggregator and generally happy Snapzu user this concerns me because I have no indication as to who has read how many articles from Newsweek or another news source like it. To me it is just a normal article with zero visibility as to restrictions presented by such a site at the time of posting. Now the content aggregator is at risk of a damaged reputation because of invisible paywalls deep in the coding tracked by cookies or whatever else may be going on.
In my particular case a quick conversation with the user who had the complaint resolved the issue as I hosted the text off site with a generic text host. This may not be the case every time as many users may not be willing to have that conversation or even reverse their decision. I was lucky this time. I pride myself on posting quality and easily accessible content. I don't much enjoy having my reputation on Snapzu degraded or tarnished because of the unseen choices of a content provider. I don't have a specific suggestion for Snapzu but I just wanted to share my experience with you all so that you are aware this is a thing and can happen to you. Thanks for taking the time to read.
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I'd like to apologize for being so hasty with my downvotes. I'm still used to Reddit where a downvote isn't as important (though I still use them sparingly and with reason) since reputation is just calculated by a flat number of upvotes vs downvotes, so it was a bit surprising for me to see someone get so anxious about a single downvote.
My only idea is to post an alternate link mirror if you see anything that indicates the site may cost money. I noticed in your text mirror that it prompted you to
If you're extra cautious about downvotes, it's a bit extra work to add a mirrored module but worth it in my opinion to ensure there's no paywall incidents. When Snapzu gets bigger, this may become necessary anyways because Reddit is known for giving accidental DoS attacks when a link to a smaller site gets popular.
while I love the idea of a mirror module for snapzu, one could easily run afoul of copyrights for "unauthorized use of copyrighted material" and get into a bunch of hot water over nothing.
I more-so meant using current mirror websites and just adding it as a linked module. Snapzu having it's own would definitely be cool and more convenient, but I agree the legal difficulties and also just the time and effort to take to develop the module would probably make it not worth it in the Snapzu staff's eyes.
Sorry, looks like I misread your original response. There is coralcdn, but I can't seem to get it to work on my end. I wonder if there's any other third party cache sites out there we might be able to hijack for the cause...
old comment & probably useless reply, but archive.is works.
I really liked the throwaway I used as a linked module in the original post. Just copied the text, pasted it, and uploaded it to a throw away URL that will go down in a month or so. It could be a solution but it's important that we educate people that sometimes an aggregator may not be aware of a paywall and a short conversation could get such a module added in a timely manner. Here is a link to the alternate I used.
Agreed, this could be seen as a risky solution to an issue that could be resolved other ways.
Seriously it's fine but it is a concern of mine for the sake of other people out there. This is in no way your fault and I don't want anybody to think that I'm blaming you in any way, you saw a paywall-like advertisement and acted accordingly to maintain the quality of the content on Snapzu. I don't want to make it about your actions, it's a small flaw in the system and I wanted to just make other users aware that it could be a risk. :) No hard feelings. None, at all.
Glad to hear. ^_^ I agree, it is something to be concerned about so the more people that know it's a possible issue, the better.
I've noticed a number of sites which have "drive-by paywalls". 20 people click on a link, 7 of them hit a paywall and the rest get to see the content. It's shitty. Perfectly possible you read the site, shared it, and a random user clicked on it and got the hit.
That's the problem though is when/how do we punish content aggregators for hit or miss paywalls/advertising? It's very difficult but something that has to be considered if we are going to group ALL paywalls in as an instant legitimate down vote reason. I just think its something we should consider as a community.
I did not even know this was a thing. What a scummy way to lure money out of the readers pocket.
I am not sure if this would work or not, but here it goes: I usually get around paywalls by finding the article through google. Then, when I click the google link, I get the full article with no prompts for subscribing or anything else.. Maybe for known offenders (Newsweek, WSJ, NYtimes etc), you can paste that google link in a comment?
I'll test this just here. Here's a WSJ article, when clicking it on the webpage, I hit a paywall. This is the google link. EDIT: doesn't let me post, says link exceeds 300 characters :/
Tried google short url but get an error that domain goo..gl has been banned. I guess it's because short url's are not really allowed here. Too bad, that could've been a way round paywalls :/
There are some shorteners that work fairly well when I encounter issues but then you start up issues with only snapping from certain domains x number of times per day and it's just a big mess. Also this doesn't help for the hit or miss paywall sites where only some users become paywalled as the aggregator wouldn't know which urls to google and shorten. Again, it's good thinking - for what it's worth. Thanks for the attempt.
Award for the longest link in the world?! I'd say use a url shortner for that method but most are blocked and now we're talking about an immense amount of work to simply share a snap. I don't know if this method is viable, as clever as it is. (and it is)
that's exactly what I tried - didn't work either. Too bad.. Google links would've been an easy solution.
I'm glad you've brought this up and I hope this post gets some visibility. I am a subscriber to the digital edition of the New York Times and I often stop myself from sharing their content, here and elsewhere, because of the unpredictable paywall experience that comes with a monthly limit for non-subscribers. It's unfortunate.
Wouldn't the obvious reaction be to avoid posting content from those sites?
Make a mental note and if there's some interesting news do a quick search for similar articles from clean sites and use those. It's the only way I can see past this issue, new users will always be here and educating them on that specific downvote-reason, that some but not all sites have random paywalls, seems a little overboard. I don't know how all the sites implement their paywalls and it would be a little much to ask users to invest time and try to find out if they can get past it somehow.
I agree. There is no way around companies slamming random people with paywalls. However, if somebody is to downvote for that, I think they should be able to tell why just with the downvote.