Banning people from talking about it seems rather childish though. If people are talking about something off topic it's usually because it was something jarring enough to distract from the point. "the beatings will continue until morale improves"
It astonishes me how this policy is so favorable to a money sucking strategy yet it ignores the myriad of other usability complaints that frequently pop up (e.g. Why is/isn't this on medium, wtf is this scroll jacking, why is the js so big, why is the font so small/big).
None of the workarounds cost anything—that's what "workaround" means. Your comment is a good example of what I was talking about: indignation blithely proceeding on a false premise without stopping to consider it. The fact is that these articles are freely accessible with a bit of work. Had you said "time-sucking", you'd have had a point.
> ignores the myriad of other usability complaints that frequently pop up
You're right that those are also off-topic and mostly of little value. But we can't come up with a complete set of rules to cover everything under all cases. Even if we could, the community would reject it, and even if they didn't, what a miserable way to live.
It astonishes me how this policy is so favorable to a money sucking strategy yet it ignores the myriad of other usability complaints that frequently pop up (e.g. Why is/isn't this on medium, wtf is this scroll jacking, why is the js so big, why is the font so small/big).