> You could spend 3 years compiling research on an extremely valuable topic and publish it for free...but if you put a newsletter sign-up form on the page, some

> You could spend 3 years compiling research on an extremely valuable topic and publish it for free...but if you put a newsletter sign-up form on the page, somebody here will complain about it. I think that comes from biased expectations. Any time I see an ad for something promising to be high quality I am usually disappointed by the actual quality. Conversely when a free thing is linked on HN and upvoted to the front page it is very likely to actually be high quality. Therefore my biased assumption for links on HN is that P(high_quality | asks_for_money) < P(high_quality | totally_free) I haven't recorded enough information to know how badly biased my intuition is.