Ask HN: The 'web' button is gone? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: The 'web' button is gone?

39 pointsoefrha14 comments

There used to be a 'web' button on each HN comments page, between 'past' and 'favorite' (looks like https://archive.is/IkXqk), which basically Googles the title for you. It's useful for finding original/alternative/more reputable sources, and sometimes for bypassing paywalls, either through an alternative source or through Google's cached copy. Sure you can just copy the title and Google it yourself, but as someone who often browses HN from an iPad I find it pretty handy.

It seems just gone now (I think I last used it within the past couple of days)? Wonder if I'm the only one who gives a damn about it. Would love to hear from dang or another mod about the rationale behind the removal, too. I thought to email the mods but decided to post an Ask HN on the off chance this resonates with people.

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Dan posted about the change here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23728840.

I suggested keeping 'past', and he brought it back -- although this might have been as much for layout reasons as for any persuasiveness I had. Personally I used 'past' much more frequently than 'web', but I'm sure he'd listen to arguments for 'web' if there was a significant contingent who misses it. Write him email if you don't get a response here.

Thanks for posting that link, I didn't spot it during my usual browsing on HN so assumed it was some sort of A/B testing going on. If Dan says it's toast then that's fine with me although even after reading 23728840 I'm still unclear what prompted it being nuked nor in what way(s) it was causing problems

I've seen people complaining the web button doesn't work for bypassing paywalls long before this, but that's likely because they're not aware of Google's cached copy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23768780).

Anyway, if you want it back you should probably send an email to hn@ycombinator.com too. Two people emailing is better than one.

Perhaps, although given the large volume of emails the mods must get perhaps I should explain what I used the 'Web' button for and why I found it useful.

1) When browsing I have 'Show Dead' on and after reading the front page of HN I head over to the 'New' section and take a look at the submissions there. Often there are articles in that section that are just direct copies of the original article from a different site that have been posted just to drive traffic to their (the submitters) own blog. Hitting 'Web' makes it easy to spot those and where appropriate suggest linking to the original source either via an e-mail to HN or more rarely in the comments.

2) Some of the submissions on the 'Newest' section are in a foreign language. Hitting 'Web' allows me to either just skip it or hit the ‘Flag' button.

In these sorts of edge case instances knowing the source origin of the article (if any) allows me to express a more nuanced opinion or to decide when and if to flag a submission. Note - I don't (didn't?) use the Web button for any and all submissions I read or comment on but with the ones that I did use it for it allowed me to decide whether to engage, skip or flag with a single click.

I accept that the way I used the 'web' button seems to be different from the way others used it and few people some to use it at all so I'm not too fussed about it being removed.

I have great admiration and respect for the way the mods run HN so I'm not gonna fire them an e-mail over this but perhaps others DO use the web button and can chip in with their own feelings / use cases in a single place rather than the mods having to deal with several e-mails. Also, leaving it here allows Dan & co to link to this submission if/when it comes up in the future.

Thanks for the pointer. Sent an email just now.

Direct motivation for the removal,

> That part I can help with: HN has a policy that paywalled content is okay as long as it's a soft paywall and there's a way to bypass it. AFAIK that's what the "web" button is there for, even if in my case it has not worked even once.

is wrong, though. While most sites have closed the loophole where visiting with a google.com referer header bypasses the paywall, Google still caches a full text copy if Googlebot isn't paywalled, and the cached copy can be accessed through "Cached" in the dropdown menu next to a Google search result. That works for many paywalled sites including Bloomberg.

Btw, is Wayback Machine down? I mean https://web.archive.org is up but I consistently get 503 when trying to pull any page from it. Ended up finding an example of the old layout on archive.is.

Wayback is working for me. Was able to pull up Hacker News from various dates.

It was consistently returning 503 errors when I posted the comment, at least for me; now it’s back to normal.

Wayback Machine goes down a gazillion times a day and when it works it's extremely slow. I say this as someone who uses it several times a day.

The official home page is too small on mobile and too cluttered. I wrote my own HN home page years ago using the API. Mine is about 130 lines of JavaScript. And it includes a web button. Source is on GH.

I use 'web' to Google domains I don't recognize and I'm not sure if I should trust. I assume Google will warn me at least some of the time if I'm going to a dangerous site.

https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hn.html

Well, you can use a user script to add back whatever links you want, I suppose. I don't use that link, but would like chronological sort order for everything; it can't be done on the client side so easily when there is pagination involved.

I didn't even know it existed. But now that I hear about it, I would like to have it.

I've used it and found it handy for all sorts of things too

Seems like the paywall-bypass trick hasn't worked for a long time now.

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