it might be good policy

November 19, 2002 11:18 AM

Once again, I found myself trying to follow a link to the New York Times with a username and password I'd forgotten. I wondered if it might be good policy for people to post news.google.com searches to these links instead. For example, the recent link ...
An astonishing bequest could easily have been written out as An astonishing bequest, and would not require people to log in.

posted by seanyboy to Etiquette/Policy at 11:18 AM (16 comments total)

Or you could just use metafilter/metafilter to log in.
posted by riffola at 11:29 AM on November 19, 2002

But then the link would die as soon as noogle's algorithms decided the topic was stale. Some people do like to read threads more than three days old.
posted by gleuschk at 11:42 AM on November 19, 2002

Exactly. And why would a link to Google's link be any better? Without a username, you wouldn't be able to read it there either.

dougb's original post tells you much more than the Google News page does. In fact, the link you suggest gives very little information at all. In this case, the NYT link really just tells you where dougb got his information. Sure a [registration required] note somewhere would have been nice, along with the standard [metafilter/metafilter] login, but that's more common courtesy than anything else.
posted by UnReality at 12:06 PM on November 19, 2002

Exactly. And why would a link to Google's link be any better? Without a username, you wouldn't be able to read it there either.

But you can. They have a special deal.
posted by hyperizer at 12:17 PM on November 19, 2002

The special deal works by appending '?partner=GOOGLE' at the end of the url (or '&partner=GOOGLE' if there are already params). For a while now, nytimes has allowed login-free views using partner=[whateveryouwant]. It might be worthwhile to just append something like that to your url when you post it, depending on your idealogical view of the matter.
posted by fvw at 1:00 PM on November 19, 2002

If you want to keep the link around for awhile try looking for the article on Yahoo.
posted by jbou at 1:07 PM on November 19, 2002

Which explains why Mr. Hardcock's never written back to me. Last time I buy a mailing list for dating purposes.
posted by yerfatma at 3:25 PM on November 19, 2002

Sometimes I'm unable to view articles with registration because of my cookie settings in my computer. Not an always though just happens more often with the articles that I want to view.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:33 PM on November 19, 2002

Or you could just use metafilter/metafilter to log in.

You don't read MetaTalk very often, do you?
posted by rushmc at 5:48 PM on November 19, 2002

Or you could sign up on the NYTimes site and have them store your login information as a cookie and then never have to log in at all. Geez, I got an account two years ago and I haven't ever had a problem reading anything there.

Hey, if you don't like to register at sites as a way to fight the man, I say good on ya, but choose your battles.
posted by Hildago at 6:25 PM on November 19, 2002

rushmc, I read MetaTalk often enough. I've never used metafilter/metafilter so I don't know if it still works, because I'd signed up for NYTimes back in '00.
posted by riffola at 7:08 PM on November 19, 2002

Or, you could just not link to [insert clever remark here about news links, carefully avoiding the word "newsfilter", and not mentioning that the New York Times is, in fact, a newspaper].
posted by hama7 at 8:08 PM on November 19, 2002

While you're at it, would you mind posting the FPP someplace other than MetaFilter? I mean, every time I want to post to MeFi I have to enter a username and password! And then the shadowy forces behind MetaFilter attempt to store a cookie on my computer! Plus, I feel horribly misled when I see an N comments link that doesn't explain that I will need to register to contribute to the thread.

I, for one, am sick and tired of all this oppression. So knock it off.
posted by subgenius at 12:31 PM on November 20, 2002

...along with the standard [metafilter/metafilter] login, but that's more common courtesy than anything else.

Especially for those of us who didn't even know that existed until just now. I always skip over threads and links that require a registration. I know it's free... but that's not the point.
posted by Witty at 1:18 PM on November 20, 2002

Dick Hardcock, age 93

I WILL be registering ASAP. I will forever register as this person once I stop laughing.
posted by Witty at 1:20 PM on November 20, 2002

I wondered if it might be good policy for people to post news.google.com searches to these links instead.

Better idea: if you can find it at news.google.com, don't post it at all. Most people will become aware of it within the next few hours anyway ...
posted by walrus at 7:53 AM on November 21, 2002