I would agree that there is no benefit to a person who comes from HN to read just that specific article. However, if I was a regular visitor to the guys blog and came across the article that way:
- Him posting the full text rather than a hyperlink saves me an extra click.
- Maybe it also makes it easier to talk about the article with the rest of that blogs community.
- It provides another copy in case the original goes down.
- If he also has other posts it provides a consistent visual aesthetic across the body of information.
It's somewhat like creating a miniature library and discussion group.
I don't find any of these arguments convincing, but they're possibilities.
they may also be effects of less than perfect implementations of URLs: here on HN every comment has a URL, which is really excellent. There's also a great signal-to-noise ratio on each page - I'm not talking about the quality of the content (which is also excellent) but the fact that there's very little distracting supplemental content on each page, thus reinforcing the idea that the URL is pointing to your comment, rather than some undefined ephemeral 'page' on HN.
The web at large however, does not fully embrace this level of detail and focus in URLs. So users do not feel comfortable using URLs to link readers to discrete packets of information, they feel safer just copying the data.
- Him posting the full text rather than a hyperlink saves me an extra click. - Maybe it also makes it easier to talk about the article with the rest of that blogs community. - It provides another copy in case the original goes down. - If he also has other posts it provides a consistent visual aesthetic across the body of information.
It's somewhat like creating a miniature library and discussion group.
I don't find any of these arguments convincing, but they're possibilities.