Social Media Etiquette

[danbrotherston]

[robdrimmie]

I don't know anything about the city's employee agreements, but a common clause in employment contracts I've seen and signed around social media is that folks are not allowed to post in ways that may be read as being on behalf of their employer and need to redirect to PR.

It may be that the staffer is contractually unable to speak on this matter from that account, directed your original tweet to PR who ignored it, then did so again when you retweeted advocating for a response again. I don't have the context to read any potential subtext of the tweet you embedded, but I read the text of it as a very neutral tone, instructing you on the process to get an official response from that particular staffer.

[danbrotherston]

I don't know anything about the city's employee agreements, but a common clause in employment contracts I've seen and signed around social media is that folks are not allowed to post in ways that may be read as being on behalf of their employer and need to redirect to PR.

It may be that the staffer is contractually unable to speak on this matter from that account, directed your original tweet to PR who ignored it, then did so again when you retweeted advocating for a response again. I don't have the context to read any potential subtext of the tweet you embedded, but I read the text of it as a very neutral tone, instructing you on the process to get an official response from that particular staffer.

And that's fine, I didn't actually expect or want a response from this person, I was more raising awareness. (And honestly, like I said I had already tweeted @citywaterloo directly and go no response at all, which is why I stopped bothering to engage with staff at all).

If that really is the reasoning @citywaterloo would do better to explain that staff cannot engage and I would get a better response speaking with staff directly...even though that isn't true (in both cases I get no response from staff).

Instead their response reads like I am acting improperly by tweeting at a public handle of a person I know in our community who I felt would find this relevant.

[jamincan]

I'm not sure who you @'ed, but if they mention their role with the city in their twitter profile (I know several examples of people who do, some clearly more official than others), I think it's fair game to @ them on city matters. On the other hand, if their twitter does not mention their role and they clearly keep it separate from city matters, I think it's respectful to leave their work off twitter and use other channels to engage with them.

[danbrotherston]

I'm not sure who you @'ed, but if they mention their role with the city in their twitter profile (I know several examples of people who do, some clearly more official than others), I think it's fair game to @ them on city matters. On the other hand, if their twitter does not mention their role and they clearly keep it separate from city matters, I think it's respectful to leave their work off twitter and use other channels to engage with them.

They don't mention it on their profile, but that's only one side of the coin. I wasn't engaging this person as a staffer, they are still a member of our community.

[ijmorlan]

The following is based on not knowing you know the staffer in question outside of purely professional matters. In my opinion, they are complaining about tone, while completely ignoring the substance. In principle, they are right, in that staff should be able to exist in public (going to the store, riding their bike, posting on the Internet) without having to deal with unwanted work-related communication from the public. But it’s ridiculous that the only engagement they will make is to tell you off for what is essentially a matter of politeness, while not even deigning to say “no comment” about your actual concern. I can’t say how others will perceive it, but I hope that people will notice that the City is distracting from the actual issue: I think your question is very fair; Council should not be able to get political points for having pro-cycling (or maybe we call them anti-death?) policies, while constantly undermining those same policies every time an actual specific design is approved.

Given that you know the person, that makes it even more unreasonable (although to be fair they might not know that).

If I were in your place, I might respond by saying that I referred to the person as a community member, not as a City staffer, and by the way, what about the substance of my question, which is a very reasonable question for me to ask? But I don’t claim any expertise, so I’m not going to call this a recommendation.

[Spokes]

I see no issue with what you did here. Sure the individuals might not reply because they might not be able to as others have said. But that's not on you. You can @ whoever you want in a tweet. Free world. Leave it up to those individuals to pick if they are to reply or not.

[jamincan]

I get pretty annoyed if I am contacted through my personal social media or email (none of which mentions my work) about work-related stuff. I try to keep a pretty firm wall between those two parts of my life, but there are the occasional holes. I'm not saying it's against the rules, or immoral or anything, but I would consider it impolite and intrusive and be pretty irritated if I was in this persons shoes. As for engaging with him as a community member; I'd be pretty skeptical about your motivation in their shoes unless they've already engaged in these subjects on twitter or invited that sort of discussion.

[panamaniac]

Since I'm not a social media person, this "issue" has me scratching my head. How is the City's message not just a explanation of City policy, which one would expect to follow in future? End of story.

[danbrotherston]

Since I'm not a social media person, this "issue" has me scratching my head.  How is the City's message not just a explanation of City policy, which one would expect to follow in future?  End of story.

I mean, as ijmorlan points out, they have no reason to know that I know this person, they also have no reason to believe I don't know this person.

But the tone is incredibly poor. They ignored my first message (and the second one for weeks) and now pop up, offering no real engagement, just to object to me @tting a public social media profile (by calling it private--I always find it concerning when someone believes public posts on social media are in some way private).

[danbrotherston]

I get pretty annoyed if I am contacted through my personal social media or email (none of which mentions my work) about work-related stuff. I try to keep a pretty firm wall between those two parts of my life, but there are the occasional holes. I'm not saying it's against the rules, or immoral or anything, but I would consider it impolite and intrusive and be pretty irritated if I was in this persons shoes. As for engaging with him as a community member; I'd be pretty skeptical about your motivation in their shoes unless they've already engaged in these subjects on twitter or invited that sort of discussion.

I can understand where you are coming from. But I don't get annoyed, I generally just ignore interactions like that, or maybe ignore is wrong, I don't respond to interactions like that, but I may still find them of interest. If I wanted to avoid such interaction, I could easily block an individual. I can see it being problematic if the engagement was repeated and unwanted, AFAIK that is not the case.

That being said, where do you draw the line? This is not a person I would hesitate against saying hello too if I saw them in public, in a non-work setting, or making short small talk comments, "nice day, cool trail, glad the city built it" type thing. Yes, it is related to their work, and that is how I know them, but I wouldn't consider such comments improper in public, would you? Is a public social media profile different?

And like I said in the previous comment, I have a big issue with the engagement in context from @citywaterloo in this case, i.e., they ignored everything I said.

[robdrimmie]

But the tone is incredibly poor.

It really isn't. The tone is neutral. You are emotionally invested in this exchange and are reading that tone into it. I even think you have good reason to based on what you say here. But not because of tone.

And even if the tone is poor, I hope you'll consider what value you policing their tone brings to the discussion, if any. Ad hominem attacks do nothing to strengthen your argument.

(And yes, I say this as someone who has indulged in such on this forum and in other places. Has it ever strengthened my argument?)

[jeffster]

So I'm looking for a group opinion here.

The content of the tweet is not terribly relevant, I am frustrated with the city's plans on Union St. I tweeted my remarks and response, since I find I do not get any useful response by engaging with staff (and this is reinforced in my mind by staff's mediocre actual response). Therefore, I wish to publish a message publicly, and directly at council and other interested folks locally.

As a result I tweeted my objections publicly to council and a few others, cycle_wr and relevantly, a city staff member, who AFAIK is not involved in the project, but who is involved in active transportation in the city. I have met this person in person on numerous occasions, but who I might refer to as an acquaintance--I don't know them well. This tweet went out a few weeks ago, and today I retweeted myself because Brian Doucet raise Union St. again. @citywaterloo:

Clearly there is grey area, I am not sure based on how much I know this person, etc. etc. but I found it a very strange request, and the fact that it came weeks later (only after I retweeted myself) really looks bad on them. I have no idea if I have actually offended the city staff person in question (I won't name them), but this felt to me like either an overzealous response by the corporate account, or a very strange way of someone letting me know they don't want to engage (which can be accomplished with the block option).

It's worth noting also that I have had ZERO engagement from either the city's corporate social media or ANY city councillors on this item, in fact the ONLY contact I've had from the city is to complain that I @tt someone in our community who happens to also be a city staff member. I find it pretty tone deaf.

To address why Waterloo was slow to address this: they probably have a lot of tweets directed at them, and they likely don't read every tweet.

As for addressing staff members directly in conjunction with their employers handle, not cool. It is different if you are tweeting to certain councillors, as they are elected individuals and it comes with the territory. The issue is that it comes across that you and the staffer have talked extensively, and adding their handle to a twitter conversation confirms this, and it ends up getting the staffer in trouble with management, and in turn, it follows a chain. I know this because I work for one of the cities.

I can't talk about the details of what you want, what council is expecting to happen, and what staffers are actually proposing, but you will find a better response by PM'ing everyone involved, if possible, or emailing directly, rather than publicly exposing your grievances.

Having said that, did you delete your original tweet? Because I only see the corporation and two councillors named. To me, that's fair game and you did nothing wrong.

[danbrotherston]

But the tone is incredibly poor.

It really isn't. The tone is neutral. You are emotionally invested in this exchange and are reading that tone into it. I even think you have good reason to based on what you say here. But not because of tone.

And even if the tone is poor, I hope you'll consider what value you policing their tone brings to the discussion, if any. Ad hominem attacks do nothing to strengthen your argument.

(And yes, I say this as someone who has indulged in such on this forum and in other places. Has it ever strengthened my argument?)

Perhaps tone is the wrong word...appearance...basically they ignored all of my interactions until this, and they misrepresent a public social media profile as "private".

I am curious what you think my ad hominem attack is?

[danbrotherston]

So I'm looking for a group opinion here.

The content of the tweet is not terribly relevant, I am frustrated with the city's plans on Union St. I tweeted my remarks and response, since I find I do not get any useful response by engaging with staff (and this is reinforced in my mind by staff's mediocre actual response). Therefore, I wish to publish a message publicly, and directly at council and other interested folks locally.

As a result I tweeted my objections publicly to council and a few others, cycle_wr and relevantly, a city staff member, who AFAIK is not involved in the project, but who is involved in active transportation in the city. I have met this person in person on numerous occasions, but who I might refer to as an acquaintance--I don't know them well. This tweet went out a few weeks ago, and today I retweeted myself because Brian Doucet raise Union St. again. @citywaterloo:

Clearly there is grey area, I am not sure based on how much I know this person, etc. etc. but I found it a very strange request, and the fact that it came weeks later (only after I retweeted myself) really looks bad on them. I have no idea if I have actually offended the city staff person in question (I won't name them), but this felt to me like either an overzealous response by the corporate account, or a very strange way of someone letting me know they don't want to engage (which can be accomplished with the block option).

It's worth noting also that I have had ZERO engagement from either the city's corporate social media or ANY city councillors on this item, in fact the ONLY contact I've had from the city is to complain that I @tt someone in our community who happens to also be a city staff member. I find it pretty tone deaf.

To address why Waterloo was slow to address this: they probably have a lot of tweets directed at them, and they likely don't read every tweet. 

As for addressing staff members directly in conjunction with their employers handle, not cool. It is different if you are tweeting to certain councillors, as they are elected individuals and it comes with the territory. The issue is that it comes across that you and the staffer have talked extensively, and adding their handle to a twitter conversation confirms this, and it ends up getting the staffer in trouble with management, and in turn, it follows a chain. I know this because I work for one of the cities.

I can't talk about the details of what you want, what council is expecting to happen, and what staffers are actually proposing, but you will find a better response by PM'ing everyone involved, if possible, or emailing directly, rather than publicly exposing your grievances.

Having said that, did you delete your original tweet? Because I only see the corporation and two councillors named. To me, that's fair game and you did nothing wrong.

They weren't slow, they did not respond, my original tweet which was @citywaterloo was months ago...so yes, perhaps they don't read every tweet, but the claim of "tweet our corp account and we'll help you" is incredibly hollow.

I did not address staff members in conjuction with their employers handle, I did not engage city staff at all in this tweet, except for the person that I happen to know who again, AFAIK is not involved with the project under discussion.

As for "PMing everyone involved"...I've PMed people for years, and it's never made a difference, engineering staff do not listen at all, council might listen, but generally just do what staff says unless there is substantial public outcry, hence the public post.