As others I had a totally different expectation given the title. I thought it would be a piece about how Wikipedia had some message or lesson that we should listen to. I think the author had no bad intentions and what he build is probably worth looking at. I was just pointing out how a mistake in web design made me completely ignore this website because I felt it violated my control over my computer.

In that case I wonder if we can't solve the problem in the community, e.g. by requiring a [sound] tag in the title or something. I enjoyed this link and there is a risk of people downvoting it for the sound alone that might cause interesting links like it to be removed in the future.

I'd prefer [autoplay], but I support the idea!

I sometimes post links to BBC Radio programmes. I tag those with [audio], but they are not autoplaying.

HN: should I continue to tag those?

I haven't ever submitted anything with autoplaying audio, but I imagine I'd use [autoplay] or similar.

> In that case I wonder if we can't solve the problem in the community, e.g. by requiring a [sound] tag in the title or something. I enjoyed this link and there is a risk of people downvoting it for the sound alone that might cause interesting links like it to be removed in the future.

Solving it in the community can solve the problem of people unwittingly stumbling upon it from here, but it doesn't solve the bigger problem, which is that autoplay is rude. (Surely we've all had the experience of not being able to find the tab from the huge group we just opened that's playing the sound.) It's good if sites see that they get fewer visitors with autoplay than without.

It really should be a browser level setting where you whitelist the sites that are allowed to do it. I don't mind when Youtube does it, but most sites annoy me.

You can't know how intrusive or loud sound is. It has an area effect that normal website media doesn't.