GCSAA Members,
Sorry for the delay as I was travelling late last night. Thanks for the discussion on the policies. As staff, we're certainly not trying to be heavy-handed, and we hope this will help explain our approach to the process.
First, reviewing the forums is shared among the communications team, although other team members will use the forums to keep up with what's going on in the profession. We rotate the responsibility, and typically whoever is assigned will check in a few times, subject to other projects, meetings and deadlines that are happening that day.
When we check the forums, here's what we're on the lookout for:
· Member questions and feedback. Depending on the topic, we'll try to get an answer and respond back on the forums, or route the message to a staff member who can respond to it.
· Content issues – profanity, threatening messages, explicit material, etc. This is clearly the most controversial area, so I'll address this one in more detail separately.
· Commercial/antitrust issues. We look for any aggressively commercial postings, and check to make sure product discussions don't head down the road of encouraging boycotting certain companies or price fixing.
· Reported posts. We'll review messages that have been reported by other members.
· Threads out of place. If a topic is out of place and hasn't already generated a lot of feedback, we'll move it to a more appropriate location.
What's considered profanity? We approach it like this: If you can say it on TV (network, not cable), then it's probably acceptable. If not, it probably qualifies. On the use of symbols, initials, acronyms and creative spellings, here's what we use: If you can figure out the word, or if you would read it as that word, it qualifies.
We've also had a few instances in which items that were meant to be humorous were unintentionally derogatory toward a group of people in terms of ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, etc. That's something we have to be sensitive to, so they've been removed for that reason. In other areas, we rely on your feedback to know what crosses the line – some items may be gross, but are they offensively disgusting? If it's in a "gray" area and we don't hear from you, we'll usually err on the side of leaving it alone.
Do we catch everything and are we perfectly consistent? Not at all. It is a subjective process, and it's not our intent to be continuously monitoring the forums.
We know that many of you miss the old process where a staff member would contact you with a request to edit your message. Like many of you, we're trying to do more with less, and we just don't have the resources to do that anymore. That said, if you ever have any questions, just ask. And, if you see a message that is inappropriate, we encourage you to use the "report this post" button (the "!" on the message) and let us know.
Because it is a forum for members, we really try to let the conversations go as much as possible, and we've added forums such as Politics and Sports Talk so you can get to know each other beyond work-related topics. At the same time, it is still a professional forum, so we need some policies to guide it. If there are particular changes you'd like to see, let us know and we can ask the Strategic Communications Committee to review them later this year.
Again, we hope this helps clarify the process, but realize you may have more questions. If you do, let us know, and if you would like to refer to the full current policy, here's a direct link to it:
http://www.gcsaa.org/GCSAA-forum-policy.aspxJeff Bollig
Sr. Director of Communications