And I'm sick of going back in time ten years when ads would pop up or under the page you were viewing. Then ad blockers were invented. Then popups were re-invented in the form of modal dialogs.
Seriously. If you're so [self-]important that you can't be bothered to close a modal window, you clearly don't have time to be reading articles from HN.
I wouldn't refuse to read an article because of something like that (unless it made it overly difficult to read the article), but I think bad design habits do need to be called out. They seem to be becoming more popular on sites that really should know better. If your design choices make the article uncomfortable or annoying to read, it detracts from the content.
You're not the target audience (if you're the average HN reader, that is, don't actually know you personally.)
HBR gets a high price for its ads because its audience is older businesspeople (decision makers on high-priced services and products) who consider its content high-worth and authoritative (this attitude rubs off on the ads around the content.) Having a gating ad that scares away people who don't value the content enough to close it probably increases the price per ad more than enough to make up for the slightly decreased viewership of the ad.
Calling out bad design habits would be useful if people making those decisions were HN regulars. Otherwise you're just preaching to the choir and distracting everyone from the content.
What about "if you're so [self-]important that you can't be bothered to disregard comments that don't conform to your idea of how the discussion should go". (I don't believe that BTW, surely there's space for discussion and meta-discussion).
