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Discussion on: Please don't post Paywalled Medium links

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Ben Halpern

Most folks in this thread have probably already read this post, but I'll link it because it touches on this...

Paywalls are generally frustrating, particularly as a mechanism for viral growth. Having users pay directly instead of having it run through ads could be a good thing (Netflix, etc. is generally well liked by consumers) but it's not content that gets consistently linked to.

The big issue is that the software ecosystem runs on widely shared, free and open content. We just couldn't do our jobs the same way if GitHub issues or Stack Overflow posts wound up getting paywalled.

So yeah, don't link to paywalled stuff. Stack Overflow has been growing their Stack Overflow for Teams line of business which offers a private version of the service for big companies to create an internal knowledge-base, and this works in complement to the free Q&A service. I'm pleased with that approach.