woan@exeter.austin.ibm.com (Ronald S Woan) (06/16/91)
In article <1991Jun15.180650.19010@midway.uchicago.edu> valley@gsbsun.uchicago.edu (Doug Dougherty) writes: |>I've been reading these disclaimers for quite a while now, and after a |>while they do get tiresome. Does anyone really think they are necessary? |>(I like the ones by people who are basically one man shops and they can |>quite truthfully say that what they right does represent the views of |>their organization/boss/whatever...) The problem is even with the disclaimer, there are many that still assume that all employees speak for their employer, and I have gotten messages reflecting such an assumption. > a) People cease putting their corporate affiliations in their > signatures. Then readers will never get the impression that > authors are speaking for their companies. This notion is > consistent with the general fact that Usenet is a adamantly > non-commercial entity, and people are *never* speaking for their > companies here (except for the degenerate case mentioned above) > (Contrast this with Compu$erve or GEnie, which are commercial > entities, with company sponsored groups, etc) People also assume that if the originating address of someone's email is a corporate address, then they belong/represent that company... :-( > b) Failing this, can't we just change the default assumption to > be that whatever is posted here does not represent anyone else's > views or official positions (unless explicitly stated otherwise) That's already the way it is supposed to be according to the newusers info postings. In any event, I think we'll be living with disclaimers for the forseeable future. -- +-----All Views Expressed Are My Own And Are Not Necessarily Shared By------+ +------------------------------My Employer----------------------------------+ + Ronald S. Woan woan@cactus.org or woan@austin.vnet.ibm.com + + other email addresses Prodigy: XTCR74A Compuserve: 73530,2537 +