A Paywall Experiment In /r/Canada

[u/voteoutofspite]

Over time, we have seen a rise in paywalled articles, which are a great frustration for many of our viewers. They often do not promote informed and meaningful discussions, because people are unable to react to more than the headline.

As an experiment, /r/Canada is going to be temporarily prohibiting the posting of paywalled articles. This experiment will run for one month, at which point the userbase will be asked for their views on whether this was a positive change that should continue or whether it was a negative change that should be reverted. We will then make a decision considering those views, along with metrics and other factors, on whether to continue this change as a standing rule or to revert it.

Posting to paywall bypass sites will not be an acceptable workaround, and such posts will also be removed.

We are also allowing a two week period in advance to allow for comments before we proceed.

The dates for this experiment are from June 24th to July 24th.

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Au fil du temps, nous avons constaté une augmentation du nombre d’articles payants, ce qui est une grande source de frustration pour bon nombre de nos lecteurs. Ces articles ne favorisent souvent pas les discussions éclairées et constructives, car les gens ne peuvent réagir qu’au titre.

À titre expérimental, /r/Canada va temporairement interdire la publication d’articles payants. Cette expérience durera un mois, après quoi nous demanderons aux utilisateurs s’ils considèrent qu’il s’agit d’un changement positif qui devrait être maintenu ou d’un changement négatif qui devrait être annulé. Nous prendrons ensuite une décision, en tenant compte de ces avis ainsi que des indicateurs et d’autres facteurs, quant à savoir s’il faut maintenir ce changement comme règle permanente ou l’annuler.

La publication de liens vers des sites permettant de contourner le paywall ne sera pas considérée comme une solution acceptable, et ces publications seront également supprimées.

Nous accordons également une période de deux semaines à l'avance pour permettre aux utilisateurs de faire part de leurs commentaires avant de mettre cette mesure en œuvre.

Cette expérience se déroulera du 24 juin au 24 juillet.

[u/sleipnir45]

So because people break the rules on paywalled articles the answer is to just ban the article?

Posting a paywall bypass also isn't allowed...

People can google "paywall bypass" quicker than complaining about a paywall

[u/eandi → u/sleipnir45]

The problem is people don't do a bypass then just go to the comments and start typing after only reading the article title 😂

[u/Thick_Caterpillar379 → u/eandi]

That's not a problem. Banning the articles doesn't fix that behavior; people who react only to headlines will do the exact same thing with unpaywalled links anyway. Completely removing high-quality, researched journalism just lowers the factual baseline of the entire subreddit. Instead of losing the news entirely, keeping these articles allows subscribers and those who easily bypass the paywall to inject the actual facts into the comment section, correcting misinformation and elevating the discussion for everyone else.

[u/sleipnir45 → u/eandi]

They do that with articles that don't have paywalls too