I've been able to access articles today.  Perhaps they capitulated?

Another message with the SA founder, David Jackson:

Me:

Hi David,

I can't help but notice the drastic reduction in the number of comments on SA articles ever since the ill-advised decision to go entirely pay to play. These comments are as valuable, if not more so, than the articles themselves, as the general public is able to dissect the article and call out what it got right/wrong. In addition to the drop in comments being a sure sign that your user base is plummeting, the lack of comments will cause further people to leave.

This can all have been avoided if your company monetized your site effectively. Unfortunately, you do not. Not even close.

David:

1. You're mistaken about the number of comments. We are tracking the number of comments carefully, and they are up significantly.

2. Your assumption that we are unaware of the value of the comments on SA and careless about them is naive. We put into place a number of measures to ensure that the growth of our comment community would not be reduced by the metered paywall, and in fact would increase.

This is the reply I sent to the SA founder that messaged me privately:

David,

Your contributors are amateurs who you pay peanuts to. I know, as I contributed for several years. The same article I submitted to you guys I was getting paid 4x for by other parties. It's pathetic.

As for advertising, you'd easily be able to sustain your business if your advertisement team wasn't full of failures.

For instance, the webpage I'm replying to you from, there is not one single advertisement. This is common across any pages on your site. It's utter failure to monetize your webpage.

Now, your advertisement business will get even worse, as your readership is going to fall of a cliff.

If you guys want some help on how to run your business profitably, please let me know and I can send you my resume. I have an MBA and 13 years in the market. I'm serious.

nobody cares about context for your bad business decision. With competent advertisement management, you wouldn't need to charge people for this nonsense.

You pay your contributors pennies anyways.  $0.01 / page view and nothing from mobile views?  You guys really need help on managing ad revenue...on the page I'm on right now, there are NO ADVERTISEMENTS.  ZERO!

This is nothing more than a pathetic money grab that is going to backfire spectacularly.

Fire whoever made this decision.  Your user count is going to fall off a cliff.  Can't believe you simpletons think people are going to pay for the opinions of random people.