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Comment by skinnymuch | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know how that makes a difference to his comment. Which is exactly what I was thinking.

i don't know that it does make a difference to his comment, but on HN it's a standard practice (that i like) to disclose when commenting on your employers and competitors.

I understand your feeling, but it's also HN standard practice to assume good faith.

I think the first comment is quite short and, while it doesn't bring a lot to the table I think it's a feeling echoed by a many in the current community. (Not necessarily me, but the zeitgeist seems to be there). So, in this light, doing a disclosure on each and every comment is... Unreasonable, especially if it's something you feel deeply about.

They're not mutually exclusive and in fact are mutually reinforcing. As readers of a comment we are expected to read it charitably and part of that is assuming that the writer is not shilling. On the other hand we expect writers to disclose major conflicts of interest and I would categorize a direct competitor as a major conflict of interest (note I'm not calling deimorz a shill and do think his/her comment reflects a common sentiment, but I appreciate the knowledge that deimorz is working on a competitor).

The latter breeds the trust for the former to work.

Transparency is not worth it if a lot of people agree with you? Transparency is not worth it if it's something you care deeply about?

That is NOT what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that sometimes, lack of explicit discolosure can be (IMO) excused if the interest is not intentionally obfuscated and disclosure was done at some point in the past.

That means that, in my point of view, Deimorz raised a good, but biased point while failing to fully discose the contest within his comment, and notatoad brought extra missing context. Both, good things. But I would refrain from painting Deimorz as intentionally misleading, considering this, at most, unintentionally misleading.

> I would refrain from painting Deimorz as intentionally misleading

I don't think that's what happened here; in the same way that you saw Deimorz's comment as not malicious, I didn't see the response mentioning their connection to the issue as malicious either. You mention that the "disclosure was done sometime in the past", but I had never heard of them or the site they founded, so I found the comment replying with context to be informative.

In the vein of assuming good faith - please don't assume my comment was in bad faith. It wasn't meant as a criticism or a dismissal of his comment, just relevant context. A disclosure isn't just a disclosure of a potential bias, it's also a disclosure of relevant knowledge and experience.

I knew some context that i thought was relevant, so I added it. I wasn't trying to pick a fight.

There is an account profile in which you can write these things, if you're feeling like qualifying your comments is too onerous.

The user notes it prominently in their profile.

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