Someone’s attacked you online; should you respond?

The US Air Force may not seem the obvious place to go for advice on this, but they do seem to take online communication seriously and are an organisation whose activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, are frequently talked about online.

Being also rather a large bureaucracy, they’ve created a flowchart to help decide how to respond to online comments. Some parts are, er…, very American management speak (”proactively share your story”) but there’s also a lot of good sense in it, particularly in its five headings about responding to blog postings:

Transparency (make clear who you are)
Sourcing (give sources for your claims)
Timeliness (respond quickly)
Tone (the tone you use reflects on yourself and your organisation)
Influence (put your efforts into the sites that matter most)

Anyway, here is the full flowchart for your delectation.

UPDATE: Here is the updated version.

Certainly the US Air Force seems to get the Web 2.0 world rather better than the US Army, with its odd description of Twitter.

Hat-tip: David Meerman Scott

5 Comments to “Someone’s attacked you online; should you respond?”

• Anon Says:
  5th January 2009 at 10:46 am

  I suppose, if you change the USAF’s order a bit, you could use the mnemonic ‘TITTS’….

• James Graham Says:
  5th January 2009 at 12:22 pm

  Clearly we are now in the post-Bush era. Nowehere on that flowchart is there the option “carpet bomb their city.” I’m impressed!

• Matthew Cain Says:
  6th January 2009 at 11:55 am

  Thanks for this Mark – really interesting. I had an exchange with David about his wikipedia entry. What’s your view? http://bacatu.blogspot.com/2009/01/should-you-respond-to-online-attacks.html

• Mark Valladares Says:
  6th January 2009 at 1:48 pm

  Mark,

  Actually, we have a United Kingdom equivalent, thanks to Tom Watson, ironically…

  http://liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com/2008/07/blogging-for-bureaucrats-new-labour.html

• Mark Pack Says:
  6th January 2009 at 1:53 pm

  Matthew: I think it’s generally best for someone to make a comment on the talk page, rather than to directly change their own entry. If no-one else steps in to then correct the posting, I’d leave it a little while, make the change – and again explain on the talk page. Otherwise you risk getting dragged into a fuss, which may indeed get more attention than the original entry.

  Mark: good point; thanks for the link.