[plorkyeran]

Where does he mention that other than the sidebar? I completely missed the fact that he works for Google while reading the article since it's never mentioned in the body of the article itself, and the article is written as if he's completely new to Dart and trying it out for fun. If he's not trying to present that image, then it's a really awful writing style.

[spankalee]

The very top of the page:

Seth Ladd's Blog

Dart DevRel @ Google, web engineer, author, conference organizer.

[vdaniuk]

Do you imply a conflict of interest? If you do, please state it explicitly. Your criticism as it stands doesn't add to the discussion and one could say that your writing style is really awful, too.

Sidebar is not an unusual place to place author bio and it is definitely enough for me.

[plorkyeran]

Okay, I'll state it explicitly: I feel that the article is actively deceptive about the background of the author, which makes me distrust the content of the article as well. The sidebar with his background is not visible on the first page of the content, so I would have had to interrupt reading the article to read it.

I say that it is a bad writing style because I am assuming good faith. I assume that the positioning of his bio is merely unfortunate and not specifically chosen to reduce the number of people who read it, and that the article is not actually trying to deceive me about the author. I think it is obvious that coming across as astroturfing to some subset of your readers when that isn't what you're trying to do is a bad thing.

[magicalist]

> I assume that the positioning of his bio is merely unfortunate and not specifically chosen to reduce the number of people who read it, and that the article is not actually trying to deceive me about the author

Oh please. Most blog authors barely manage to fill out an About page, let alone a sidebar and a big subheading at the top of the page that says who their employer is. If you're going to claim to be "assuming good faith", how about actually doing so?

[sethladd]

The header of the layout says "Dart DevRel @ Google,", as you mention the sidebar has a bio (which I will move up), and I just added a note to the beginning of the article. Thank you for the feedback, and thanks for reading.

[grifpete]

I agree. This is getting your panties in a twist because a writer hasn't spelt out his putative conflict of interest in a way that conforms to your norms, when it is certainly plain enough for many readers (I had no problem at all figuring it out and wasn't at all offended by it).

[jamra]

Please don't insult his writing style. That's an ad hominem attack and it is the only thing in this conversation that doesn't belong here. You don't have to agree with his concerns, but please cut that out.