I’m considering blackballing certain blogs/newsletters/whatever that have most of their content behind a paywall. The trick is always deciding where the dividing line between commercial and non-commercial is and figuring that out can be difficult at times because a lot of websites are right on or near that line.
Even though I hate the term, I’ve always relied on “content” as being an important part of listing a site in the directory. It’s not the only one, but I’ve rejected many sites for having no content. If almost every post is behind a paywall that is sort of the equivalent of having no content.
Two problems come to mind:
- How much of the content can be behind a paywall?
- How do I detect all this when reviewing for inclusion? (Anything hosted on Substack should alert me to investigate, but just being on Substack does not disqualify a site.) Time is always a problem. I don’t have all day to investigate a website.
- What are reasonable exceptions to the rule.
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