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Pam Neely
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The post that started this discussion is suspiciously similar to a post Belle Beth Cooper wrote on her site recently: http://blog.bellebethcooper.com/gated-content.html. Right down to the entire paragraph about chuggers, which is actually lifted word for word, as are several other paragraphs. So just to be fair - thanks Beth!
If you have credited her somewhere and I'm just not seeing it, pls excuse.
But it is a great topic for discussion, and has prompted a lot of good comments.
I have written entire posts about gated vs ungated content, which I will not link to in order to avoid appearing overly promotional. I am in the pro-gated camp, simply because while gating may (maybe, a little) hurt a brand and compromise people's trust, and will definitely reduce shares, there are business reasons to gate content. Marketers need to build email lists for financial reasons.
If you are purely out to change the world (which I most definitely support) and don't have to earn any money, then don't gate your content. Give it all away for free. According to David Meerman Scott, you'll get 20 to 50 times more shares and readers if you don't gate your content (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219649). But unfortunately, a lot of us do content marketing to, um, earn money over time.
You might not gate your content if you don't need to earn money near term, or if you do want it to go viral. And per Frank Strong... no, I cannot off-hand think of a piece of gated content that went viral, except maybe Frank Kern (and similar folks') product launches, where they give you hours of video tutorials in exchange for an email address.
I also heartily agree with everybody who said that gating content is acceptable if the content is really good. But honestly, why even bother creating poor content, ever, anywhere? Even creating so-so content is barely worth it. There's only 10 or less positions on the first page of SERPS, and less than 1% of users ever go to page two. I don't see the point of making anything but the best content you can muster.
Of course, I'm not the finest content creator, or even in the class of finest content creators, so my best efforts probably fall under "so-so content" a lot.