Disclosure of interests

Actually, it could well apply to me if I were to hire just one person that I had "met" over here at Wilders.

For example, if I hired you`as a malware analyst (or janitor), does that mean you represent Tall Emu? Would you happily then update your signature with the classic "opinions I post are my own, not those of my employer?" Would you be happy if I said, "hey some of your posts over at Wilders are a bit controversial - Just stick to analysing malware and keep quiet please."

Would you get upset if members started then PM'ing you for support for the product when your role here is one of participant and the hypothetical job you have really is not customer facing?

Personally I think it would be great if everyone was tagged with their affiliations. Someone pops into a thread for a product, and they could be tagged everything from owner, developer, beta tester or user. We could have anti-affiliations as well.... ignore ol' fred, he's marked as "Axe to grind" for the three products we're discussing here..

So, while I do agree with your point that it's nice to have an affiliation disclosed, as LWM and others have said, its not completely practical.

Bear in mind also that this forum is really just a collection of the official support forums of a few vendors. If this forum were more open then perhaps there would be a stronger argument for such a policy.

 

Agree 100%. Since I walked into the discussion I don't mind being put on the spot by DA. Provided other members aren't dragged into it I don't see what the big deal is. Surely by posting my comments to DA I have, at least to a degree, forgone the right not to be used as an example?

 

Devil's Advocate,

You may wish to think that, but the fact of the matter is that you kicked the door in with respect to some members. That door was not gently opened.

How would you like it if I pressed you on your affiliations? You say you have none? Well let me be the judge of that - what are they again? What are you hiding? There's no need to answer, it's a rhetorical question, but this is precisely where this line of inquiry will go.

It would be extremely easy for every discussion here to devolve into personal attacks on the messenger based on idle and unsupported speculation, rather than the content of the message. As you well know, I comment on a number of products on this board. If someone didn't like my opinion on product X and the expectation is that any and all relationships have to be out there, what is there to stop anyone from launching into a tirade along the lines of:

Member: "Come on Blue, when are you going to stop being a compensated PR flak for them and come to your senses" line of attack?
Blue: "But I'm not!"
Member: "Sure..., tell me another one..."

What you are proposing ranges anywhere from an innocuous situation to a gross invasion of privacy. If an error is to be made, it will be on the side of preserving everyones privacy. Read the terms of service for the forum. The lead sentence is: You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or in violation of ANY law.. Personal privacy is explicitly noted there. As in any venue like this, the discussion should revolve around the posted material, not who is posting it. If the content is wrong, that will self-correct over time.

I believe you should step back and consider both the tone and content of your responses. It less of a discussion and more of a pointed cross examination. The dynamic is rather different.

You don't see the fundamental difference between a member making comments regarding another members personal status and that same member voluntarily disclosing the information? One is possibly a gross invasion of privacy, one is not. If I posted my salary here, there should be no issue with it aside from people asking why the heck I did that. If you posted that same information, I would consider it a violation of my privacy. I would consider you doing similar things regarding my employment along the same lines. By the same token, if you were to consider the content of postings by me as inappropriate (by either poor analysis or a commercial bias - it doesn't matter), by all means call me or anyone else on the content posted.

That conclusion is more than a stretch in logic.

Blue

 

Dear Blue, you know that I have always respected your opinion and your judgement, which is why I find your response here shocking and why I decided to respond.

I'm amazed and dismayed that you can't tell the difference between stating something of public record, Person A works for Company X and recommending that he disclose it, and and making unsupported charges and demanding a full accounting of one's history.

If you think what I did was the same as that, you must have not seen the original post.

And it already happens now, with or without an official policy of disclosure. In fact, without an official policy of disclosure such attacks would be even more likely to be merited!

Given that the people we are discussing have already announced their relationships it seems strange to worry now about their privacy. As I said before, you guys seem to see it as a policy where you start digging into the histories of every poster and start making accusations , where I see it as a simple policy where people who are known to have such relationships and have not hidden them in the past to display this information *all the time*.

How can there be privacy issues if Mike Nash has announced to this forum a dozen times what he does? My concern is that during the times he does not announce them , some people might feel mislead when they realise later the truth.Actually Mike Nash is a bad example for this because his posts are almost 100% support for Online armor, so it's difficult even for a beginner to not realise the truth. but I'm constrained by the need not to mention other names.

Wow, it's amazing that you are accusing me of a gross invasion of privacy, when all I did was to mention something of public record and something the poster himself as announced to the world several times and perhaps every regular on this forum already knows.

So if I say on some other forum you are a moderator of Wilders, I'm doing something wrong by violating your privacy?

Please Blue, try to be reasonable.

You are attacking a strawman Blue. First off, nobody is asking anybody to disclose salaries. Secondly, I mentioned known facts that the poster himself didn't try to hide, so that's hardly a privacy issue.

More interesting is that you seem to think privacy is a sufficient defense if someone wants to astro-turf.

If I were a developer of a product and i started coming to this forum and talking about my product, would you no want to know that I was the developer? Or could I hide behind this privacy shield clause? I asked a similar question, but no one wanted to answer it.

This isn't about you. I don't know why you and everyone is acting this way. It's as if they are afraid they themselves will be put on trial. This isn't a witch hunt, this is simply a request for well known facts that every regular knows, and that the person in question himself doesn't mind being known to be consistently displayed.

 

Actually, that sentiment is returned. Regardless of whether I agree with your points or not, they always make one think beyond the superficial and sometimes step back a bit and think again, your moniker is well chosen.

I'd suggest that we should probably agree to disagree in this case. One can always make the case that more information is better, and it is, but more information always comes at a cost. The questions, therefore, are precisely what is that cost and whether one is willing to bear it. Reasonable people can disagree on the answers to those questions.

Best regards as always,

Blue