Please come up with a flag for articles that are purely promotional for the authors paid service

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BrianinAZ
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Please come up with a flag for articles that are purely promotional for the authors paid service like this one "Stanford Chemist: How Little Swaps Can Generate Big Alpha". More and more the articles here are just advertisements for subscription services. It's becoming a bunch of financial advisers without the fiduciary responsibility advertising on your site. 

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SA Editor Daniel Shvartsman
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Brian, thanks for the message. You're referring to a blog post, which isn't published as an article with editorial review. We will look into ways to make it clearer what is a blog post and what is an article, as the point stands and we need to make that distinction clear. Thanks for sharing.

When you say a flag, where would you want to see it? In your inbox, in the subject line, somewhere else?

Best,
Daniel

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BrianinAZ

Daniel, I don't see anyway to tell a "blog post" from an "article with editorial review". For example I get an email From: account@seekingalpha.com Subject: JMF: An Interesting Total Return MLP Fund. I open the article and it is an informative article that contains a significant amount of data and information. There is a reference to the authors subscription service "Looking for a portfolio of ideas like this one? Members of Energy Profits in Dividends get exclusive access to our model portfolio. Get started today" but that is the extent of it. Contrast that article with  "Stanford Chemist: How Little Swaps Can Generate Big Alpha" where more than half of the article is devoted to promoting the author's subscription service. There is a bit of actual information provided in the remainder in the form of examples but it is largely superficial. I have read articles from Stanford Chemist that have been very good and informative. This one was an advertisement. As I stated above this is becoming more and more common and in my opinion diminishes the quality of your site and I would imagine over the longer run will affect the number of return visitors to the site. To answer your question something in the subject line that distinguishes promotional from research/informational articles would be of benefit.

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SA Editor Daniel Shvartsman

Brian, great, thanks for clarifying. Sounds like we need to do something in the inbox or the subject line to make it clearer that this is a blog. Right now, we have a disclaimer on the blog itself, but we can make it clearer and that only shows up after you click through so it's less helpful.

We will discuss how to do this and put something in place in coming weeks.

Thanks for sharing, and happy holidays,

Daniel