Is this a new policy? Don’t get me wrong, it’s just a tiny drop in the bucket of inconsistancy, but it’s laughably simple to search and bring up nearly 50 threads mentioning it (in which many are gasp links), only one of which contains any mention of moderator disapproval: references (and a link) to a thread about it which had been disappeared (and apparently threats of banning to the poster who brought it up).
So…policy or not? Even-numbered dates? What?
I can certainly see their point. The NYT is halfway a pay site these days (at least for the good stuff, IMO). Posting a UN and PW for it is akin to stealing content. You’d be receiving content at no charge for which the pub expects payment.
The place which shall (apparently) not be named does not allow passwords to paid accounts to be posted.
Yet, curiously, they have five sets for the NYT.
And, even more curiously, a few for a certain pay-to-play MB we know and love.
I find your argument somewhat lacking.
Did you report them? Their FAQ says accounts to paid services are not allowed.
I remember I reported a few usernames and passwords I saw on there to the SDMB once before.
Additionally, the ones for the SD which I saw on their site do not work. Do the ones for the Times work? The “success rate” reported seemed awfully low for working passwords. Are they for the paid service, or just the free trial?
I find your argument a bit lacking, if none of those work for an actual paying service.
If they were at all serious about their policy, instead of just hand waving hypocrites, they’d simply have those sites blocked. Someone enters a PW for www.nytimes.com and it’s not reported.
Do you seriously believe they’re making a real effort to avoid having pay-to-play sites available? If so you’re naive beyond words and I want to tell you about this bridge I have for sale.
And I just went and reported www.nytimes.com as a pay site. We shall see.
Although I find it amusing that immediately after I entered it as such the very next screen I saw listed that exact site as their most popular.
I don’t know how much effort they’re making. They have a “report this site” button. Considering this board has nearly the same system in place for reporting spammers and trolls and socks, would you say the SDMB is not making a real effort to get rid of those if some slip by every now and then?
Also, I don’t think reporting nytimes.com is going to do you any good, as that is a FREE registration site which allows certain benefits, such as emailing stories. TimesSelect (select.nytimes.com) is the pay service you’re probably thinking of.
As Tuba explained in your linked thread, we don’t want people discussing how to circumvent registration for other websites, even free registration. I thought that was pretty clear.
Just because there have been cases where references to programs or plugins to circumvent registration have gone unnoticed doesn’t mean we’re toggling the rule/not-a-rule switch. At most it means we’re lazy and unobservant. Feel free to help us out by reporting any future references to registration-subverting sites or tools you may run across.
Works for me. I hadn’t heard of the restriction before (beyond the lone admonishment I mentioned in my OP), and I scanned the current rules and such at the top of ATMB and didn’t see anything I thought was relevant. Thanks for the answer, and I’ll be sure to keep an eye out.
Just as a suggestion: I don’t know how much weight it would carry with the site, but I don’t imagine it could hurt if one of the admins or Ed sent along a strongly worded email asking that the boards be blocked (if that hasn’t been done already).
Not a bad idea – I’ll forward that along.
Just to make it clear, a free registration to the New York Times website gets you access to most of the paper, including articles from the last week. Time Select is the paid service and includes access to the news and Op-Ed columnists, the archive and some multimedia content. (Access to the New York Times crossword puzzles is a separate product called Premium Crosswords.) My guess is that the Site-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named has login accounts only for the free content.
BTW, this site is designed to generate weblog-safe links to articles on the New York Times website, although I don’t know yet if it will work on the SDMB.