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Football Officiating => Texas Topics => Topic started by: TXMike on May 07, 2015, 09:20:10 PM
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Still trying to digest the new social media policy. Even wondering if having a discussion about the policy may be a violation of the policy. (Sort of reminds me of one of those freak sheiks who was on TV last night saying that just having a discussion about Muhammad means the discussers should be penalized by death) I definitely get where they want to go and the validity of some of the concerns but have we gone too far?
Introduction:
TASO Social Media Policy
Social Media has become more accessible than ever and is changing the ways we communicate on a daily basis. The guidelines for functioning in an electronic world are similar to the values and ethics policies individuals are expected to live every day, whether you’re posting, Tweeting, talking with co-workers or chatting over the neighbor’s fence. Remember, your responsibility to TASO doesn’t end when you exit the court or playing field.
Purpose:
To assist TASO members in participating online in a respectful manner that protects the Mission and Reputation of TASO, the sports officiated by TASO and adhere to the policies of our organization. We have come up with a few guidelines to provide helpful and practical advice when operating on the internet as an identifiable TASO representative. These guidelines apply to members who create or contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, or any other kind of social media. The list includes but is not limited to: Twitter, Yelp, Tumblr, Google+, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook pages/groups, or comments on online media stories.
Guidelines:
TASO members should exercise care in setting appropriate boundaries between their personal and public online behavior, understanding that what is private in the digital world often has the possibility of becoming public, even without their knowledge or consent. TASO strongly encourages all members to carefully review the privacy settings on any social media and networking sites they use and exercise care and good judgment when posting content and information on such sites.
Here are a few guidelines when operating on the internet.
• Read and familiarize yourself with the TASO Social Media policy and Guidelines.
• Any personal social media posts and comments must not potentially embarrass TASO, damage the TASO
reputation or tarnish its image.
• Never misrepresent yourself or TASO by making false or misleading comments or posts. All statements must be true and accurate.
• TASO members should NOT comment on any topic related to their officiating assignments to include:
o Specific game or match assignments, locations or dates, either past or future.
o The scores or outcome of any game or match.
o Teams or schools involved in any past, future or current assignments.
o Situations or events that occurred in a game or match.
o The officiating performance of other members, partners or officials in any association, sport or
level.
• Members should not be “friends” or “connections” with coaches, athletic directors, players or any other participants in the sport in which they officiate.
• Members should not create TASO specific Social Media profiles, or represent themselves as official TASO
websites, pages or blogs without the written consent of TASO.
Consequences of Violating the TASO Social Media Policy:
Inappropriate activity that is in conflict with this document’s guidelines may result in disciplinary action in accordance with TASO by-laws, ranging from private reprimand to expulsion, and may include fine, probation, suspension, reduction of any classification, or any combination of the above deemed appropriate by the decision making body.
Be smart about protecting yourself and your privacy. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully. The Internet has a long memory.
Adopted: April 26, 2015
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Like you Mike, I can see where they are going. But I think we've gone too far.
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Think they may have over stepped, but doesn't bother me that much. I don't use Facebook, Twitter or any of the others. Other than texting my crew or commenting on here, I am not on the Internet that much.
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Facebook, tweeter, what is that? You won't find me on any of those.
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Boy it's really going to suck when some official's child becomes a player. "Sorry son, but I have to unfriend you...."
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It would take one lawsuit by a diciplined official to change this.
Here's a scenario. An official does a high school game. One of his "friends" on Facebook hears the official's name announced and posts on the official's Facebook page that he sees he is officiating the game. Has there been a violation?
We talk about and post videos of games and situations here all the time. Sounds like that is definitely a violation.
This is a poorly thought out policy.
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The policy says"identifiable TASO REPRESENTATIVE"
We don't know who the posters on here are! ;D
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Is this a violation?
[attachment deleted by admin]
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A couple of take away's from this absurd policy.
1. Yes Doc that is a violation
2. Another example of people with no knowledge of the material making rules about the material. It was like the time at the College Station state convention when the topic was retention of younger officials and everyone on the board was over 60 years old. The plan they came up with was to allow 16 year olds to become associate members and pull chains. NO SOLVENCY
3. Do they realize we are basically a volunteer organization? This policy is really going to go hand in hand with the retention of new officials.
4. I learn more about officiating thru conversations on this site then any TASO produced resources. I guess that is now illegal.
5. Until TASO produces a legit educational website/program they have no business creating a social media policy. Babysteps TASO Babysteps.
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Good points Coby.
Other things to ponder: Anyone has a right to say where they are and what they are doing. Those are indisputable facts, not opinion. We are independent contractors. If our work is limited by a suspension because of a heavy-handed, over zealous rule, a lawsuit for loss of income, lawyers fees and damages is probably not far behind and easily won. We learn through websites like this, and videos and descriptions of games we may or may not be involved with. Limiting that would be counterproductive. At every varsity game, official's names and chapter are announced, so the information is quite public. Anyone wanting to know names and addresses of officials can simply file a freedom of information request with a public entity and that school has to comply.
While I understand the intent, the policy is just silly and unenforceable. If I want to post a picture of my officiating crew, there's not much TASO can do about it, without some serious repercussions to TASO. As long as my statements are facts and not opinion, we should all be good.
Hopefully TASO has realized this error and will correct the policy. We live a lot different society today than even 10 years ago, with the advent of social media, and if TASO does not stay up to speed, they will certainly be passed by and will not help anyone on the recruiting end.
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What if you are a coach in one sport and an official in another? Do you have to unfriend yourself??
What if you have a family member that is a coach? What if you have a lifelong friend that coaches on the other side of the state?
Are those things which you can be "fined" for?? Speaking of a Fine? WTF is that about, "hey you owe us 25$ for posting on facebook"... yeah, come and get it...
This has all the makings of olds writing rules and regs for things they know nothing about. Like Coby said, we have a hard enough time keeping officials, let's make up some more rules that the youngs will detest so that we can increase our recruitment.
Solid plan...
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As long as it says we "should not" do certain things it reads as a list of suggestions, not a policy. It is a essentially a list of things that could lead to trouble if you are irresponsible, but not grounds for fines, suspensions, and etc. if you are being responsible.
I don't necessarily disagree with the parts that say "must not" and "never misrepresent..."
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this is a knee jerk response to situations they should of took care of and moved on.
this is catch all policy they can use against the people they want to use it against.
in the end you will lose officials over this.
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The officials that quit simply because of something like this probably weren't going to be around long anyways. If someone is being irresponsible on social media it is just a matter of time before it catches up with them.
Although the policy is fairly poorly worded, TASO is putting something in place to possibly fall back on when someone has done something on social media to the point they no longer need to be a part of our association. I really don't think the point of the policy is to stop people from posting a picture of their crew or to make an official unfriend someone they have known since they were a child but who happens to be a HS football coach.
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• Any personal social media posts and comments must not potentially embarrass TASO, damage the TASO reputation or tarnish its image.
Adopted: April 26, 2015
Ok...Let me start here. I work for a major IT firm that takes social media very seriously and has a well developed policy. Like any policy, a violation can impact your employment status. The issue when writing a policy and related enforcement is, ironically, much like football rules. Very little grey area should exist. .
The example bullet point above has the following sections that are wide open to interpretation:
"potentially embarrass TASO",
"damage the TASO reputation" or
"tarnish its image"
What are the definitions of when TASO has been potentially embarrassed, damaged, or tarnished?
For example: If a rule change is made, and there happened to be unintended consequences, it could very likely embarrass TASO, if a mistake was made and a subsequent reversal/adjustment was needed. Any official commenting or having discussion/debate on such an issue would now be subject to penalty, up to and including termination as a TASO member, for any statement or discussion against the TASO "company line", if that conversation were had on social media (like this forum).
To the point of old geezers making policiy for recruiting 16 yr olds -- someone should have spoken up or realized that such a policy and related enforcement does not exactly welcome healthy discussion, but rather smothers distention (which might be the goal...we dont know)
I am sure this "policy" is intended to avoid situations like: If an official (in uniform) and a coach (lifelong friend, family member, or otherwise) take a picture together and publish it to Facebook. It creates the appearance of impropriety. However, TASO already has a policy in place to address these kinds of issues...its call the Conflict of Interest policy. If an official works a game with his college roommate as one of the coaches, then either he had disclosed the conflict and both coaches agreed to use him at crew selection, or the official violated the COI policy by not disclosing. In either case, TASO is covered.
Sounds like this social media policy was not well thought out, but accomplishes its goal of giving TASO air cover in the event someone goes rogue online...they can point to the policy and say "we told him not to do that, so we will fire him now".
The unintended (maybe) consequence, is that no one wants to tell the emperor about his new clothes. (look it up if you dont know).
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The policy says"identifiable TASO REPRESENTATIVE"
We don't know who the posters on here are! ;D
I actually think this is part of the problem as to why organizations feel the need for social media policies. People think they are anonymous online. So they say things online that they don't put their name to and certainly wouldn't say to a person if they were standing face to face. This type of cowardly behavior has become commonplace in cyberspace. So the only recourse companies and organizations have is to establish a policy to give them recourse when the inevitable hatchet job internet post occurs.
For those who think anonymity online is real: It takes one subpoena to this or any website's admins to turn over registration information that will immediately identify anyone. Even the most sophisticated techies out there, of which very few officials are counted, your home/work internet has a unique thing called an IP address that is easily traced to your physical location. You have no anonymity in cyberspace.
This ends today's public service announcement. Please return to your regularly scheduled shenanigans.
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Which is why my post had a smiley face!
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The officials that quit simply because of something like this probably weren't going to be around long anyways. If someone is being irresponsible on social media it is just a matter of time before it catches up with them.
Although the policy is fairly poorly worded, TASO is putting something in place to possibly fall back on when someone has done something on social media to the point they no longer need to be a part of our association. I really don't think the point of the policy is to stop people from posting a picture of their crew or to make an official unfriend someone they have known since they were a child but who happens to be a HS football coach.
according to the policy you can not post pictures. don't write it into the policy if you don't plan on enforcing it.....
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• Members should not be “friends” or “connections” with coaches, athletic directors, players or any other participants in the sport in which they officiate.
But by all means, continue to take them fishing. pi1eOn
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according to the policy you can not post pictures. don't write it into the policy if you don't plan on enforcing it.....
Where does it say this? Is the policy above just a portion of a more thorough version that I haven't seen?
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Anyone see the email sent out today by Tommy?
He wants feed back from us via chapter president to district director to the board
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Heck, We've got chapters and individual crews not following the printed mechanics manual with no repurcussions, so I wouldn't worry too much about this piddly policy. pi1eOn
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Heck, We've got chapters and individual crews not following the printed mechanics manual with no repurcussions, so I wouldn't worry too much about this piddly policy. pi1eOn
Good point.
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What is a mechanics manual???? Are we fixing cars???
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Still trying to digest the new social media policy.
Mike, This policy makes you "done" answering questions on Old Coach and 5Atexasfootball.com.
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Mike, This policy makes you "done" answering questions on Old Coach and 5Atexasfootball.com.
How?
No comments are made about a particular game, crew or event. but merely answering rules questions. Nothing in the policy that says anything about that.
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Because I considered as written that some could/would be overly officious with this vagueness and "should Not comment on situations or events that occurred in a game or match" to include not just your game but the games of others.
I don't like the draft policy at all.
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based on the comments about crews not following the mechanics manuals, I would suspect that this policy would only be enforced at the point where a complaint was filed. So, I would recommend that regardless of where the comment is made, that you understand and accept that it will probably become public, and really just relies on whoever you are talking about to decide if they want to stick it to you or not with a formal complaint.
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That is a good point. Unless someone actually made a complaint it might not even be an issue. Although if someone on the TASO Board were to become aware of a "policy violation", (not just this policy but any policy), wouldn't they be bound to report it themselves?