Your comments

I see the same thing...started to happen early this morning.  Seeking Alpha is broken.

Thanks, its something that probably has been needed.  Years ago when Yahoo and Silicon Investor were better, we had fantastic boards and interactions.  Hopefully you can figure out how to implement this to prevent the bad things that happen on forums.


Will you have keyword search for articles, instead of just company name or symbol?


In regards to article comments, I don't think you are going to see people invest as much time in there knowing they only have 10 days.  And if they miss the article, then they can never comment, even if they have knowledge to offer, if they are not behind the paywall.  I find the comments much more useful than the content of the articles many times.  In fact I have gotten ideas for new stocks from these comments.  There is always unintended consequences of actions, which I am sure is being noticed.


Are you not losing a lot of SEO for your articles being behind a paywall?  The link juice that comes from people linking to your articles (which cannot happen with a paywall) is a loss to your overall site.

The useless comment being a placeholder so you can continue to comment and read the post?  That behavior does make sense, another unintended consequence of the current policy.  My issue is the reduction in comments.  Many of the stocks that I had followed had comments weeks or months later.  I cannot currently pay for a service that would degrade these comments long term.  Cutting off the public ruins the site IMO.  The lifeblood of any bulletin board.   I would like to see Seeking Alpha set up permanent bulletin boards for each stock symbol, that is independent of the articles, and that the public can participate in without a paywall.  Another suggestion is to have an advanced search that is not keyed by only symbol or stock name.  I have tried to search terms like "contrarian", and it does not get me any results.  A general bulletin board could help here too.

They are going to lose some of their best minds.  And a lot of the free content (the comments) that we all love to read will go away, as there will be fewer people contributing.  So even if I was willing to pay the few, I get less for my money.   They need to come up with another model that is not locking out the majority of contributors.

Yes, unintended consequences.  Losing your core group could deplete the good ideas and interaction on SA.  I am very fearful of this.  Half the content on SA is provided free by the "non-subscribers".  Don't ruin a good thing.

I was thinking the same thing....creating a site like this is not rocket science. Someone will create another community and bring in those that have left this one.  Its all about the community, not the articles.  If you lose 90% of the community, then you have lost everything, and your competitors will pick up the slack.

This new plan will hurt people that were already subscribers, as the comments on the articles will all dry up.  Would not be surprised to see a new website created to take advantage of all the seeking alpha refugees.    I will repeat, its not just about the Paywall, but the effect it will have on the content on the site.  Less comments = less content.  They may start to lose previous subscribers like you because this, because the drying up of comments will affect them too!  Paywalls also block search engines = less traffic. 

Wow, this article sums up exactly what I was thinking.  The comments area is the most valuable commodity of Seeking Alpha. Only the free model will keep this flow of information intact.  I think Seeking Alpha has a huge Unintentional Consequence here.  Here they have people giving them free content on their site (via comments), and now want to charge them.  I love the comments, they shoot holes in the articles, and sometimes people give you better stock picks.  Really valuable.  I would not subscribe now for that reason, not just the money, but the depleted and ruined comments areas will make Seeking Alpha less valuable to me.


Its not about how much.  Any subscription model will ruin the comments area on Seeking Alpha.

The problem is that this will lock out most investors, and the comments on the articles will dry up.  The comments for me were the essential part of Seeking Alpha.  As important as the articles.  With less people participating, the comments will drop down significantly, and that makes Seeking Alpha a less valuable website to me for stock information.  I have participated in stock forums since 1990 on Prodigy, so I know how important the comments section can be.