[mbreese]

Yes, your affiliation is quite relevant. When you are talking about something when you have a clear conflict of interest, you need to disclose it. Then at least the reader has the right context in which to make a decision.

When you post w/o disclosing, you make it seem like someone from this community has found your product interesting and is suggesting others try it. Instead of working for a company and trying to drum up business while disparaging a competitor.

Seriously, things like this reduces the likelihood that I'll ever try Tonido to nil. All you had to do was add "disclosure: I work for Tonido" to your post, if that is the case.

[niggler]

tl;dr: read http://hastebin.com/raw/gefuxumubu

"your affiliation is quite relevant. When you are talking about something when you have a clear conflict of interest, you need to disclose it. Then at least the reader has the right context in which to make a decision."

I used to think the way you do. Then I entered the financial world. At this point, I've seen so many people talk up their positions without disclosing that I automatically assume everyone has a conflict of interest. Then something really strange happened: I stopped caring about the affiliations and really focused on the veracity of their statements.

I recommend you read http://hastebin.com/raw/gefuxumubu, which is a copy of the zerohedge.com conflicts of interest policy. We are all adults here, and a person's persuasion shouldn't somehow affect your ability to make a rational analysis of the arguments that a person lays out.

In this case, if you bothered to look at the offering, you would see that it indeed obviates the problem that dropbox has all of your emails: when you self-host, the accounts are stored on your servers

Note that I haven't actually tried the service, but this is based on my understanding of the offering. There may be vulnerabilities in their implementation. Who knows. But to immediately dismiss a remark because of a conflict of interest doesn't change the fact that the argument may be factually correct and germane.

[mbreese]

I've never seen someone use tldr; to send someone to a different link :)

My response is that it is all about context and community norms. Here, on HN, the norm is that if you're going to bash someone, and you work for a competitor, you disclose that. If you can't pass that small ethical hurdle, there are other companies I can send my money to. (Not to mention, That I consider it uncouth to bash a competitor like that)

In the financial world, things are probably different and you just assume some level of conflict from the beginning. And that's fine, so long as everyone knows the ground rules.

I've actually looked into Tonido a couple of times, so I already knew what the service was. I have a friend who was all ready to buy one of their plugs for their lab when their university got hooked up with Box.net (I think).I probably wouldn't have thought to question them had a) I not already known what Tonido was and b) they had already been downvoted, so I wasn't the only o e to put it together. For some reason, I always had reservations about it, and so this just cemented an already held feeling.

But, you are quite right that different communities have different norms.

[lsaferite]

Just out of curiosity, where was he (minm) bashing his competition?

This is a totally honest question as I looked when you wrote this and found no bashing.

[mbreese]

> You are no different from the dropbox forum moderators

That was the line I was referring to...

[jodrellblank]

Then something really strange happened: I stopped caring about the affiliations and really focused on the veracity of their statements.

But it's not just how truthful the statement is, it also covers "why am I considering this statement at all?".

And the answer "because someone I trust has had the same problem, considered the available options, and recommends X" is very different to "because someone who works for X says use X".

[niggler]

If you spent your entire life only listening to those that you "trust" and if you define trust in terms of those that agree with you, you end up in an intellectual bubble. It is incredibly important that you at least consider what people are saying.