Folks who comment in this forum and who work for an EA org often append a "disclaimer" to their comments, along the lines of "speaking for myself, not my employer". I find such disclaimers slightly distracting and annoying, in part because I suspect they are unnecessary. I also fear that this practice may change commenting norms in such a way that adding disclaimers will become necessary at some point in the future ("What do you mean you were not speaking on behalf of your organization? Why didn't you add a disclaimer, then, like everyone else here now does?"). However, I realize that these suspicions and fears may not be well-grounded, so I'm curious to learn what others think. I welcome answers from everyone, but especially from those who do regularly add such disclaimers to their comments (feel free to use an anonymous account if you aren't comfortable discussing your reasons publicly).
Thanks. I agree it probably makes sense to add such statements when your posts or comments could be seen as promoting an organization you work for. The general argument for disclosing potential conflicts of interest applies here.
While I didn't make it clear in my question, the cases I had in mind are not cases of this sort. Rather, I was thinking of cases in which the purpose of the disclaimer is to indicate that the views one expresses should not be interpreted as representing those of one's organization.
Larks draws a useful distinction between disclosures and disclaimers, which corresponds to these two different cases. I sympathize with his arguments for concluding that, while disclosures are desirable, disclaimers are unnecessary.