You can certainly see how we rate all articles here: thefactual.com/news. No email required.
On our main homepage (landing page) we've found it better to ask for email because our daily newsletter is even more polished than our site as it adds an editorial layer atop the ratings/curation so as to deliver a world-class product. (And, in a bit of marketing it seems like preserving some intrigue is better... though I haven't A/B tested this).
We found that our best retention is the newsletter. Most convenient for our target audience and even higher quality than our site due to some editorial oversight. So that's what the home page encourages.
When we had people go straight the site (thefactual.com/news) it did not convert as well to the newsletter and retention wasn't as great. But to be honest that was a while ago when I tested this. Maybe we should revisit.
On our main homepage (landing page) we've found it better to ask for email because our daily newsletter is even more polished than our site as it adds an editorial layer atop the ratings/curation so as to deliver a world-class product. (And, in a bit of marketing it seems like preserving some intrigue is better... though I haven't A/B tested this).