NPTR Facebook Closed Group A. Welcome Message The welcome post/message is an excellent opportunity to educate new members AND make them feel welcome. 1. Consider batching them together in a list welcome post 2. Include website link as a comment or in body of welcome message 3. Include Public FB link as a comment or in body of a welcome message 4. All members of the closed group are encouraged to comment on the New Member posts with a hello type message. Invite them to a run! Sample posts B. Cover Photo 1. Update once a week at most. Frequent cover-photo changing dilutes the impact/importance of the photo. 2. Make an effort to comment in the newsfeed on the cover photo change. This is an opportunity to promote something relevant and tie the cover photo to an upcoming event/race or recent achievement 3. Consider using Canva (free app) for sizing the photos. (Often a cover photo appears centered and beautiful on a home PC, but when viewing on a mobile device, it is uncentered and heads are chopped off. Or vice versa, good on phone, bad on PC). 1 of 6
C. Description (Located on the right-hand side of the FB page) Proposed: NPTR supports the healthful, social and competitive aspects of trail running. Whether you are new to the trails or experienced, please join us for a group run soon! Website: www.northparktrailrunners.com Group run calendar: https://tinyurl.com/y7u35j87 Public Facebook: www.facebook.com/northparktrailrunners.com/ Current: D. Community Posting Standards The NPTR Closed Group is an online, Facebook community where members share a common interest: trail running. Members are able to solicit advice, share news, discuss issues and simply communicate to one another about trail running. We are a diverse group of individuals with varying perspectives and ideas. Diversity is a strength we celebrate. Please keep in mind: if the content becomes irritating or uninteresting, individuals can remove themselves from the group. Additionally, settings within Facebook can be altered so that notifications for posts within the NPTR Closed Group are eliminated. You are in this group by choice. If you wish to learn about the weekly group runs without all the chitter chatter and pictures, perhaps the NPTR Public Page is the better option. That said, we do have guidelines (below) that aim to make the Closed Group more enjoyable for the majority of members. 1. Be respectful of one another. A dialogue requires understanding and peaceful engagement. Be open to learning and share your views in a way that allows for differences in points of view. 2 of 6
2. Try to keep the mission statement in mind when you are posting. Irrelevant content becomes annoying. (You don t want to be annoying, do you?) 3. If you are unsure about the content you are about to post, or how it may be interpreted, best not to post it. 4. If you stumble across content within the Closed Group that you find troubling or offensive, please consider these options: Contact the poster and communicate to him/her how their post makes you feel. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding. The poster may ultimately edit or remove the post Use the Report to an Admin function, which is available on all posts. E. Administration and Moderation: Guiding Principles 1. The Administrators and Moderators of the NPTR Facebook Closed Group cannot monitor the Facebook group at all times. We trust the members of the group to conduct themselves as adults and treat one another with respect. 2. There will always be annoying (and arguably unnecessary) posts. Key points: What is annoying to one person may not be annoying to another person. One s tolerance level of questionable posts tends correlate directly with their like (or dislike) of the poster. (e.g. Joey Bagadonuts posts XYZ and it s hilarious. Janey Bagadontus posts XYZ and it s annoying and perceived as spam.) Unless a post is hurtful and/or clearly mean-spirited, issuing warnings can easily become subjective, time-consuming, divisive, and ultimately cause more damage than the actual post itself. Periodic reminders to the group regarding our community standards are encouraged and often used by other FB groups. 3. Warnings and Termination (These points apply to everyone, include Admins & Moderators) If an individual posts content that is mean-spirited and/or hostile towards another individual, a warning will be issued. Additionally, the poster will be asked to delete his/her post. If an individual manages to collect 3 warnings (over the course of his/her lifetime) their access to the Facebook Closed Group will be terminated. All warning-worthy incidents will be documented (name, date, screen cap of the post) and saved for future reference. (document storage logistics: TBD) 3 of 6
If a member uses the Report to Admin function to report an offensive or hurtful post, the poster will receive a warning. If there is an especially egregious violation of the guidelines, any individual within the Closed FB Group can request that action be taken above and beyond a warning. In this instance, the Admin(s), Moderators and Board of Directors will vote to determine appropriate action(s). If there is a dispute of any sort (e.g. an individual receives a warning and disputes the validity of the warning), the Admin(s), Moderators and Board of Directors will vote to determine course of action. Any disputes or issues with respect to the execution of the above-listed points: a vote will occur among the Admin(s), Moderators and Board of Directors to determine the best course of action. 4. No posts should be deleted. The nature of FB allows for newer and more popular posts to rise to the top of the newsfeed. Many people access old posts for information. Older posts that seem irrelevant to one person may be useful to another. 5. Censorship (the deletion of posts based on content) is not condoned. (See section D, number 4, above, for how to handle posts with questionable content) 6. Who should serve as an Administrator? Who should serve as a Moderator? Choices below are based on feedback from members: Option #1 - The elected Director of Marketing is the sole Admin for the FB pages (Closed and Public) The Admin may appoint members of the group to serve as moderators. The moderators specific role will be outlined by the Admin. Furthermore the moderators will serve to "police" the actions of the Admin to be sure the admin follows the mission statement of the group and also follow established guidelines. Any moderator that doesn't follow group policy or guidelines, can have their moderator privileges removed by the admin. (No censorship If any number of moderators feel the admin is not working in the best interest of the group, they can call a meeting of the Board of Directors to state their issues. The Board will review and act accordingly. The admin privileges are removed when a new Director of Marketing is elected. Option #2 - Admins should adhere to proper standards regarding a FB group page. Namely, criticisms of other members, or admins, are not permitted to be posted. Additional administration of the page should be in accordance with the goals of NPTR, proper FB management, etc. Admin actions (deletions, etc.) are to be held confidential among admins. Members can inquire as per admin action, but confidentiality regarding who decided upon certain action is very important. Should issues arise with respect to this policy, the FB admins shall report to the board to clarify and if deemed necessary rectify such decisions. Additional policies regarding the management of the FB page shall be adopted once agreed upon by the admins. This should be a good faith endeavor, in accordance with 4 of 6
the best interests of NPTR, and under the guidance and recommendations of Amy (Marketing Person) Other items to consider when posting in the Closed Group: Pop-up runs To the best of your ability, try to include: a) GPS coordinates (if possible) of the starting point b) Meeting time c) Estimated distance d) Estimated pace, or total trail time e) If you plan to cancel if no one can go to the run, then you ll want to have an RSVP request (e.g. a poll or an instruction: Signal if you plan to come. ) Note: for pop-up runs, we want to encourage as many people as possible to post their runs. Having very rigid guidelines about how to post your pop-up run could discourage some people from bothering to post. Let s do our best to post details, but in cases where someone doesn t know the GPS coordinates, for example, help the poster out by commenting with the GPS coordinates for them! Pictures, lots of pictures Consider housing large batches of pictures from a particular race or event within an album, instead of multiple posts. This allows for easier and more efficient access of the pictures in the short term and long term. 5 of 6
NPTR: Glossary of Terms Closed Group (on Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/groups/northparktrailrunners/ Public Page (on Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/northparktrailrunners/ Website www.northparktrailrunners.com Calendar Description The content within a Closed Group is viewable by only the people within that group. The content within a Public Page is viewable by anyone. In other words, you needn t be a follower of the page to see the content. You needn t be on Facebook to see the content, either. Someone can send you a link to a public post via email and you are able to view it. The Public Page is an excellent tool for growing and expanding NPTR s membership. Events created on the Public Page can be shared to anyone ~ and contains the North Park Trail Runner branding. Open to the public, viewable by anyone Open to the public, viewable by anyone. Housed within the website, the calendar contains the planned in advance group run schedule and is updated on a weekly basis. 6 of 6