alt Hacker NewsGP's snark is unwarranted, but it's probably good practice to disclose your professional affiliation explicitly in comments related to it, even if you have already disclosed it in your profile.
I was reading your comments on Java, nodding my head, upvoting, without checking your profile and realizing that you're a member of the Java team. Knowing that doesn't mean I now suddenly disagree with you or anything. But while in an ideal world it doesn't matter who's saying something when evaluating it, there's some human factors at play - I'd like to turn up my internal sense of skepticism when dealing with someone, effectively, selling something their salary depends on; even if you're being entirely earnest, it's ultimately a sales pitch, and I feel bamboozled for not recognizing it - that'd make me appreciate transparency.
(FWIW, even though I prefer being coy about my place-of-work, I have no professional relation to this conversation. I've never used Java in my 9-5 and I haven't even really used it in earnest since, like, version 5 back in high school. I think it's always been underrated by the hacker crowd, though!)
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> I'd like to turn up my internal sense of skepticism when dealing with someone, effectively, selling something their salary depends on
This is really, really silly. Java is many times beyond the position where its developers need to desperately convince people to use it. This is a person who has unique technical expertise in the area whose credentials are smack dab on their profile, not hidden from you. Their closeness to the domain at hand should make you less skeptical of what they are saying.
I agree that it matters, but whether and how to do it depends on the standard practice in the relevant forum. On HN, it's rare for people to disclose affiliation even in their profile, so I think I'm already better than the norm here on HN in that regard.