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I saw an answer with a long italicized disclosure at the end, like

Disclosure: [X] is my current label. [...yadayadayada...] ;)

Is disclosure something we should demand or remove (as "noise" that is inessential to the question or answer) under certain circumstances? Are there other sites where disclosures have proven important that can provide some guidance? I found one meta.SE Q&A on this, related to StackOverflow.

My opinion. It's not something to worry about. There shouldn't be a lot of room for promotional activity as long as we have good, narrowly-posed questions. That is, if disclosure seems appropriate, there's probably something wrong with the Q or A. I can't think of a good Q&A where we would expect or demand disclosure, though maybe someone else has an idea...?

If we don't demand it, I guess people will only volunteer it (as the answerer above did) very infrequently, so there's no need to come up with any policy for cleaning it up. Of course, shameless plugs should be snuffed out, but I'm asking: Do we need a policy on disclosure?

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    In this case the disclosure is unrelated and therefore should be removed. In cases where it's relevant a short disclosure should be required
    – Zach Saucier
    Feb 28, 2015 at 7:02
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    Agreed with Zach. An unrelated disclaimer is just advertising.
    – Matthew Read
    Mar 1, 2015 at 19:02

2 Answers 2

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As mentioned in my comment, if the disclosure is relevant to the topic at hand, a short one should be included.

If the disclosure is completely unrelated, it should not be included or removed because it's irrelevant and a form of advertising.

In the case of the answer you linked, it is completely irrelevant and should be removed.

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As poster of that particular bone of contention, I thought better to say than to not say.

I felt the disclosure itself was reasonably light-hearted, rather than merely factual.

As it turns out, the answer itself received so much scorn I decided to remove it.

The company under discussion later confirmed that they do not release under CC... they actually impose no license at all; so whatever license would be naturally in place by simply recording a track & having it for sale on iTunes etc would be the one in use, unless an artist specified something other.

That might be worth a question in itself…
"If no license whatsoever is claimed by an artist or distributor, what licensing does actually apply?"

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