The fact that the web link is on the comments page makes it pretty difficult to find. Took me quite a bit of wondering what people were talking about until I finally found it one day.

Moving the web link to page where the main link is would be an obvious solution.

I've been here for ages and it didn't occur to me to use the Web link to sneak past their sign up wall earlier today. I support no longer allowing submissions that require "one weird trick" just to read.

To add clarity to this statement, for some unfathomable reason, the "web" link does not show up on the mobile version of HN.

This isn't some kind of "contrived trick". The reason WSJ articles are available via Google search (which is what HN's "web" link does) is because Google won't index pages that can't be read by everyone clicking on a search engine result, and WSJ wants their articles to be searchable via Google.