Paid Archive Impact on Community

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  • updated
  • Under review

Greetings:


As a relatively new member of Seeking Alpha (6 months or so), I think you are damaging the service, the authors and the community by your decision to place prior articles and earnings transcripts behind a paywall.


(1)  The ability of a wide audience to continually have access to, review and cite from an author's previous articles is an immense value add to the author's then-current article and the discussion/comments.  The value of an analytical article lies not just in the author's thoughts, but also in the well-reasoned community comments and discussion around those comments.  Often times in the comments section of an article, I will see a community member contribute thoughtfully to the discussion by pulling from that author's or another author's archived analysis of the same subject, or by pulling data from an earnings transcript.  There are also times when an author makes claims ("As I wrote on _____, I bought XXX at $ YY on Z date") which, when fact checked against the author's prior article, are either unverified or inaccurate; now, with such fact checking limited to PRO members, I fear exaggerated claims or mischaracterization of a prior recommendation will go unchallenged -- to the detriment of the entire community.


(2)  Authors' current analyses often rely on and/or build upon that author's prior published work on SA.  I have seen many articles in which, say, an author will recommend XYZ stock, and rely on (and link to) his/her own past SA analytical article on broader trends in XYZ's industry.  Blocking that past broader industry analysis will result in either less robust analyses in the present ("for you PRO people, click here; for you plebes, well, tough") or more tedious articles ("to understand XYZ, here is 2000 more words on XYZ's industry that I previously published").


Thanks.  

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anonymous
  • Under review

Hi,


Thank you so much for your feedback, we are considering it all very carefully. 


Thanks,

Daniel