Stop linking to "news" sites that require registration - RF Cafe Forums

I was hoping that I could create a poll here in the RFcafe forum section.

I find it very irritating to read a headline on the RFcafe.com homepage that I find interesting, but when I click on the link, I end up clicking around for five minutes before I realize there is no way to view the story without registering on another site.

My opinion is that those sites should be totally ignored.

What does everyone else think ?

Greetings wb9jtk:

I totally agree. In fact, I specifically try to avoid linking to those kinds of stories. Occasionally if I think something's relevant enough I'll do it, but as a rule I avoid stories requiring a login. I challenge anyone to find more than a dozen out of many hundreds in the last year.

There are instances in the Recent Additions column where I'll link to an IEEE paper that requires registration, but a lot of RF Cafe visitors have access by membership. Companies like Agilent and Tektronics require you to sign in to download many of their papers, so I will sign in under my own password to get access to the URL and then link to that URL so that others don't need to sign in.

I have written to many webmasters over the years to express discontent over the subscription policy and tell them that I will not send RF Cafe visitors to their websites for stories that require registration. The Military & Aerospace Defense Electronics website started posting partial stories then requiring login to complete, and after three or four times of writing to the webmaster, they finally stopped doing it for most articles. It probably wasn't just my complaints that reversed their policy, but I was active in changing it.

So, I've been a huge protester myself over such idiotic policies. However, as mentioned, I'll continue to link to stories if I think they're relevant enough, because a lot of folks actually do already have logins for those news sites and will go to the trouble if they're interested enough.

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- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster

I hate the login stuff too, but I don't remember hitting one from a headline on RF Cafe and I come here almost every day... during the week anyway. Admittedly I don't click on every link every though. Can you give a couple examples?

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... Jose' Arrina

This one had an interesting title. I have not read it, and will not. I am sick of registering for no reason.

https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/67444b2c-3d13 ... z1EXZlYtGh