Please disclose your commercial affiliation

The heart of the matter is . . . how does one deal with conflicts of interest?

While I do have a pretty significant financial ties to the AV industry, I wish to participate on Audiogon as an individual, NOT as a representative of a company. Which in my book means that I simply do not comment, in any way, on products or services that would affect my financial interests. One of the reasons I like Audiogon is that there's not much overlap, so it's pretty easy.

In the end . . . a forum is simply a place for people to exchange comments - you must ALWAYS carefully consider the source. An Audiogon equivalent of "all insider-stock-traders must register with the SEC" of course won't make any difference . . .

Where is the the A'gon Police Chief "Audiofeil," when you need him most? This is right up his alley!

Oh yeah, I agree on disclosing too.

I will agree that what sometimes seems to be excessive praise of a certain products may cause suspicions about the motives and identity of the reviewer, but I am curious to know what the members contributing to this thread think about member reviews which contain even mild negative comments being dumped by the moderators because the product under review is being produced or marketed by an Audiogon advertiser.

It is mandatory that any such "affiliation" be disclosed at www.positive-feedback.com. And, in fact, they are on the website.

I know of a few reviewers that are "interested" in the business, but they don't ever review products that they have such an interest in.

John

Agree re: disclosure.

But an interesting point one observes over time is that the emotional investment even owners have in their own favorite equipment creates some fairly foaming-at-the-mouth biases. Dealers, having heard more gear than many of the rest of us have, can be very fun and helpful people...more so than some of us hobbyists...as long as everyone's clear about the commercial interests.