The Air Force’s Rules of Engagement for Blogging [Updated]

They forgot to assess their own chart, which is from the Emerging Technology “Divison”.

I wonder whether “Unhappy Customer” includes people who have been bombed or strafed by the USAF.

Whoa. The good Captain here is quick. :)

Thanks Joey for posting this. I wonder how many Air Force employees are actually following this. How long has it been around?

Wow. Pretty impressive, and good guidelines for all other folks to blog by too, whether they be services, corporate or individuals.

I like.

This interesting…most bloggers in the non-military could give a rat’s ass about accuracy. Remember the Apple leaks that turned out to be false? Real money and real people were hurt there…but was the blogger? No!

Goes to show you many good things do come out of the military.

This is actually quite good. Shame about the typos, the fact that not every box has both a yes and a no, and that there are yes boxes circles emerging from boxes that don’t even have a question in them. Or is this just me being pedantic? On second thoughts, don’t answer that question.

As a former Navy ‘junior’ and a copywriter and editor to boot, I’ll lend the flyboys a hand and point out a few specifics to make the typos a faster fix (and no, Dan, you’re NOT being pedantic) …

Specifically: THREE errors in ONE public flyer, reflects poorly on the thoroughness of the organization’s attention to detail, and prompts avoidable ridicule (jokes about cursory flight checks, for starters!) so I’d add the ‘don’t post until it’s really ready’ rule…

As you can see by my own recent post on Shaping Youth for Veteran’s Day giving accolades to MyVetwork.com here: http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=3440 one can say that the military foray into social media is going gangbusters and to be applauded…so you can cross our site off any checklist of ‘ragers’ and ‘trolls’ when I offer these quick fix tips, as they’re submitted with sincerity:

1.) As noted, ‘division’ in the headline (typo)
2.) ‘Prominence’ typo under ‘final evaluation’
3.) ‘Nature’ under the ‘rager’ header…

And huge kudos to the Captain for being “on it” and conversational (tonality is key in responses too, n’est ce pas?) Great post, Joey…HNY to all!

Amy Jussel
Founder/Exec. Dir.
http://www.ShapingYouth.org

Great tool, thanks for sharing! I’m going to use this as an example for other government agencies to model after the Air Force’s approach here.

The Airforce is definitely doing the right thing. I think the fact that they are using mainstream technologies and leveraging platforms that are already built should be a credit to this Capt. and others making the decision. It sure is nice to see time and tax dollars being used more wisely than other DoD endeavors where they are paying huge $ amounts to have custom built/proprietary tech that will be outdated by the time the high priced Defense contractors even come close to completing. The AF folks are on the right path in both implementation and content. I have see a few others like Dept. of State also leading the charge to do things the right way, some examples are
http://connect.state.gov and also the contest they are running at http://www.connectcontest.state.gov
Also there is http://www.govloop.com that has a pretty good following and has more great information on what the smart thinkers in govt are doing.

Integration of these emerging technologies is def. a better use of $$ then building from scratch.

Another vote here for “very impressive.”

I find this to be an interesting contrast with Israli rules of online engagement, via Megaphone, where software distributed among self-selected civilians essentially sends flash traffic at critical articles and polls.

if the user chooses to go to the site, the software then casts a vote automatically, when this is technically feasible

I’m expecting the social web to be taking more of a hit during current and future world conflicts, so props to Air Force for having considerable guidelines.

WADR, some of you are too quick to praise this. It still needs work.

All soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines take an oath to defend the Constitution, including the First Amendment. They’ve got no business regulating free speech. Letting them set up a program to proselytize or propagandize the American people is a very slippery slope.

PR is still a legitimate activity, as in “fix[ing] the facts”, but the people in uniform have no business molding domestic public opinion. Supporting a war effort, or defense program? Fine. Justifying it? OK. Telling us how to think about it? No way.

There’s a lot to the chart that’s highly questionable. “Notify[ing] HQ” about “trolls” and “ravers”? One would hope “HQ” has better things to do, even if the airman doesn’t.

IMHO, the “Evaluate” box is flawed. Correcting “erroneous facts”? OK, maybe. Classifying US citizens as “misguided”? No. “Rectifying” a “negative experience”? No, no, no. That’s molding opinion, and a very far cry from maintaining jets, or tracking nuclear weapons. Which, BTW, has seen some mistakes recently. Let’s not spread that efficiency to regulating free speech.

As for “Response Considerations”, “Transparency” should be mandatory, not a “consideration”. Uniformed PR personnel have no business waving false flags at the taxpayers.

Seeing as “we, the people” pay for this kind of crap, I think we deserve version 3.0.

And, FTR, I’m really not interested in hearing any USAF backscatter over this. It would show that you’re really, really not very bright. Or at the very least, that your reading comprehension sucks.

Came here from Boing Boing, where we’re all very impressed. Even more impressed once I came here and saw that they’d responded to comments. If I weren’t wayyy too old (and way too gay) I’d be tempted to give the AF a try. They sure sound more sensible than where I work now (aside from the gay thing).

I particularly like the Tone box. It’s more or less the equivalent of “be professional” in a corporate context. I read that as “remember to act as an officer and a gentleman in writing on the web, not just in person” (yeah, I know they’re not all officers).

One thing in the current version (someone on BB pointed this out): ‘Timeliness’ usually means “respond fast enough” (a good thing too; waste of time to respond to a blog post from 2005, after all), rather than “take your time,” which I would call “Deliberation.” There’s a dynamic between the two, characterized by the phrase “deliberate haste.”

Again, though, kudos Air Force, especially Captain David! If there were enough like you I’d be proud to be an American again in no time!