Thompson wants to examine the view that the relationship between the media and the public sphere is damaged and that this is contributing to declining levels of trust in public institutions. He does this, perversely but perhaps understandably, by looking at a public media institution, the BBC.

Quoting Tony Blair, Thompson wonders whether the British media’s ferocity is a contributing factor:

It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Blair’s speech to Reuters

I am sure few public sector communicators were surprised by these comments. We all have our moments with the media. As we should. Democracy thrives on scrutiny. I wouldn’t want to live and work in a society where the media didn’t –or couldn’t– look critically at the government. As Thompson says:

One of the tasks of a free press is to uncover public malfeasance. The media is right to be alert to it and to pursue and investigate any evidence that it is taking place.

He is also right when he notes later that it is under this sort of intense scrutiny that a politician (and it applies equally to institutions) is in the best position to build trust and confidence in their performance:

[...] it’s in the big and sometimes tough interviews that you really build credibility and public confidence.

Quality

However, the underlying assumption here is the quality of the journalism. And this is the issue that, for me, seems to be central to any understanding of the role of the media in the trust people have in their public institutions.

Firstly, rigorous scrutiny should always be part of an open and objective inquiry. Shrinking media ownership (and newsrooms) has meant, to this avid news consumer, a move away from studied, investigative and local stories to the production of content that is more readily syndicatable to the other parts of the media franchise. What translates in all markets? Scandal, crime and, occassionally, human interest pieces with quirky angles.

Thompson is right about the tough interviews building credibility, but how often do we actually see those sorts of exchanges? Perhaps the British media are chock full of that sort of content but in the antipodes it is a much rarer occurrence. When he talks about the BBC’s commitment to make more space for ideas about policy and policy choices just reinforces the dearth of that sort of programming here.

Influence

Secondly, trust in public institutions, and indeed in the mainstream media, is now not just dependent upon the same. The democratization of the means of publishing content has seen a flourishing of commentary and critique (much of it well informed) about the way the news is reported, packaged and delivered to us. In fact, many people now trust blogs more than conventional media as a reliable source of information.

With the increasing accessibility of alternative commentary and criticism, people are becoming more literate readers/interpreters of news and what Thompson disingenuously disparages as scepticism (the ET argument is truly specious), for me, epitomizes this profound shift away from reliance upon a single, authoritative ‘medium of record.’

Trust

How does this affect trust in public institutions? As I noted above, the media are critical to a healthy democracy; it does not follow, however, that they are necessarily the dominant part of the trust equation. This is a function of a more complex relationship with our publics, one that is primarily the result of direct experience. As I said last year, trust is:

the fundamental social and political legitimacy that we have to keep earning every day.
Online reputation management

Part of that process is media relations. A small part. Most of the work is in successfully dealing with the multitude of engagement opportunities that your organization has every day, online and off.

Closing thoughts

At 18 pages (I had to print it out, there is no way I can read 6,000 words on screen), and given he is a broadcaster, you would hope that it would be written for the ear not the eye. Alas, no. There are no concessions for the ear, nor use of rhetoric; no repetition or stories, indeed nothing as fundamental as a key message. It is both abstract and prolix. Don’t ever write a speech like this; nothing will diminish trust in government more than subjecting an audience to this sort of ordeal.

There is one other egregious error. Thompson posts the transcript to the blog with this introduction:

The full text of my speech is below and I’d be interested to know what you think about it.

That may be so, but despite 34 people (as of this post going up) sharing their thoughts, Thompson himself is absent from the conversation. If you are trying to build trust, then perhaps it might be worth your while engaging with the audience whose thoughts you are professing an interest in hearing.

Photo: SeenyaRita

Police wiki

First, as part of the review of the 1958 Police Act (and in what can only be described as an audacious communciations strategy), New Zealand Police have launched the Police Act Review Wiki to allow New Zealanders to suggest wording for the new Act.

Superintendent Hamish Mccardle, who is heading up the review, said of the foray into social media:

Launching a wiki version of a statute is a novel move, but one we hope will yield a range of views from people interested in having a direct say on the shape of a new Policing Act.

The wiki is open to anyone – no registration required, and has already had a couple of edits. Like Wikipedia, however, if you are not registered your IP address is attached to every edit.

I think that this is a terrific initiative and hope that it does provide a viable channel for Kiwis to get involved in the process of reviewing the Act. I would, however, have expected to see some very clear guidelines for potential contributors. This is something that the Canadian’s got right and we could follow their lead on this.

Otherwise, in terms of the principles of public sector social media, it is a very impressive implementation.

Update 27/9/07

There are now clear behaviour guidelines posted on the About page.

Consultation blog

The other example of social media being used by a public sector agency for consultation in the headlines this week is the report of a discussion document issued by AGIMO, the Australian Government Consultation Blog [PDF 600KB].

As (rather unfairly) reported on TechCrunch, this document seeks feedback as to the Australian public’s appetite for a Consultation Blog.

Interestingly, the paper specifies moderation as an issue for discussion:

Moderation in some form is likely to be necessary as some people may choose to post inappropriate content to the discussion forum. This can have the effect of discouraging others from participating in the forum and also expose the operators of the forum to legal liability.

Two options for moderation are presented (before and after publication) and people are invited to voice their preference. This approach seems reasonable enough to me – down to the draft moderation policy attached as an appendix.

Reading the paper, what seems to have invited criticism is the fact that they are not really talking about a blog per se. This reinforces the rather clunky feel of this process and, incidentally, undermines the purported irony of a consultation process for a blog about consultations. They seem to be talking about something more akin to the (shortlived) UK Cabinet Office’s Have Your Say site.

In any event, as public sector organizations begin to deploy social media to better engage with their publics it is inevitable that there will be the occasional oversight or miscued execution. What is obvious, though, is the sense of building momentum around public sector acceptance of social media.

Why delight? Announcements like this are another indication of the influence that social media is having on the communications environment. They also influence the thinking of senior managers, by ‘legitimizing’ the business reality of social media conversations, and thereby support public sector communicators efforts to engage with new media.

Chong describes the service thus:

To reflect the ever-accelerating news cycle, Chong Newztel has designed and built a digital platform from which we can monitor and aggregate content from weblogs, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Hence the wry amusement. This purpose built digital platform sounds a lot like they have discovered RSS. They are offering the service at no extra charge (other than an increase in the number of pages you receive if you do feature in a contretemps in the blogosphere), which is terrific because you should already be doing this yourself.

Earlier this year I posted a simple tutorial on how to monitor blogs for mentions of your agency. It would take half an hour, at most, to set this up in either an online or a desktop reader.

By all means, use the agency services if you are already a subscriber, but relying on them would be foolish. The whole point of social media is to get in there, engage, and understand — not just sit back and think that you can outsource the monitoring function.

The BuzzMonitor

For larger agencies, or those with a higher public profile, you may want to consider something a little more powerful and sophisticated. Shortly after its public release, we installed a version of the BuzzMonitor at SSC. A couple of us have been playing around with it to see how useful it is in the New Zealand context.

Essentially, it is a way to not only track comment across a stunningly large number of blogs, but also to tag and aggregate those comments into a coherent conversations. If I had any criticism at all, it would be that, for a small organization like ours, the impressive feature list is hopelessly underutilized.

Perhaps with more time, I could add feeds featuring keywords for all of the public service departments so that we could track all comment about government agencies and then forward the relevant material on to each department… Like the UK Central Office of Information does, as Che Tibby noted last month.

In any event, all of this boils down to the fact that you need to be in this space, one way or another. Follow the tutorial and roll your own feeds, or use a service like Chong to get your feet wet; just make sure that you are tracking social media. Chong can see the value in this, can you?

At Chong Newztel, we have created a media list of this country’s most important and influential blog sites, and we expect this list to grow rapidly.

Disclaimer: I am not a Chong subscriber and I am pretty sure that this blog is not on that list…

Photo: Kaptain Krispy Kreme. Hat tip Karen Jones for the Chong release.

As I suggested some time ago, in a post on blogging as a public servant:

If people within your organization are blogging (and you really should know who they are), talk to them about their blogs, the scope of their involvement in other social media and try to get a feeling for how they see the boundaries to their self-expression.

The other critical point that I should have added, is that if they do touch –even only occasionally– on work-related issues, then subscribe to their feed and read their blogs. For god’s sake, make sure you are aware of what they are posting…

Mind you, this is not an invitation to crack down on what public servants are doing in their own time (and with their own bandwidth). A good counter example is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which has recently issued a blogging policy that is, frankly, a little draconian. The key point to note:

Any CBC employee who wants to start a personal blog which “clearly associates them with CBC/Radio-Canada” now requires their supervisor’s permission.
Inside CBC: the official blog

Should we expect that public servants should get their managers permission before they start blogging if they intend identifying themselves as an employee of a government department? In a word, no. From a blogger’s perspective, I would always disclose to my manager that I blog, and that from time to time I blog about my agency’s business. That is just common courtesy.

Would I expect that someone that reports to me would seek my permission before launching a personal blog that overlaps with their professional interest? Again, no. I would expect that they would discuss the matter with me and, if at any time they felt that they were ‘close to the line’ with a particular post, seek advice about the wisdom of posting it. That is both courteous and smart.

The Code

The principles that guide the behaviour of public servants are laid out in the Code of Conduct. The relevant principle is trustworthiness, specifically:

avoid any activities, work or non-work, that may harm the reputation of our organization or of the State Services.

[...] We must use judgement when exercising our personal democratic rights or voicing professional concerns. We must be careful that we act lawfully, and that we do not misuse official or personal information we have acquired through our work. We must always be careful that our actions do not compromise our organization or our Minister.

It’s the bit about using our judgement that is of particular relevance when you consider the intersection of blogging and your corporate media policy. Public servants are paid to exercise their judgement. To suggest that we are incapable of doing it when we are blogging is as ludicrous as suggesting that we should not be allowed to give presentations in public.

Spokesperson vs Blogger

For those of you that are blogging about work, this does not put you in the position of being an official spokesperson. Yes, it is conceivable that a journalist could cut and paste part of one of your posts into an article — just as they could misquote you when you front your powerpoint deck at a conference. But they won’t be able to introduce your view with the words ‘a spokesperson for the agency said…’

Does that matter? Yes and no. Blogging about something that your agency is involved in is fraught anyway. You had better assume that, at some point, you will be misinterpreted and quoted out of context, because to blithely ignore that possibility is poor judgement.

One point worth noting: publishing a disclaimer on your about page should be seen more as a convention than any sort of iron clad protection against dropping yourself and your agency into the proverbial.

Conclusion

Social media are part of the reality of our professional lives. The best way to ‘manage’ it in your organization is to understand it. Read your colleagues’ blogs, join their networks and start to participate in their conversations. Above all, encourage them to exercise their judgement and help build a culture of engagement rather than one of fear and distrust.

It is only a matter of time before a couple of paragraphs on blogging start to make their way into agency policies (media or some other). It would be a good idea if that policy was written from a position of understanding, rather than a scrambled rush to deal with some new perceived threat to the integrity of your external relations.

As a guide, you can always refer to some private sector corporate blogging guidelines, IBM’s are good; but the bottom line for New Zealand public servants should always be the Code of Conduct.

Photo: nib.ipernity.com

Bob Conrad at The Good, the Bad, the Spin has a great post about why PR people should be using blogs, and it triggered a few thoughts about how we could be using them.

Yes, you can use them as a standard corporate communications tool, either internal or external, in the way that most often springs to mind when people start talking about blogging in the public sector. You can also use this incredible technology in some other more innovative ways.

Internal applications

In addition to the obvious applications like the corporate newsletter or management team meeting digest, there are a couple of other creative uses of a blog for your internal communications.

Issues register

Allow people in your communications or senior management team to post emerging issues. The comms team can also add comments detailing mitigations and tactics and include links to media coverage. Anyone else in your organization (with access) can then add material via the comment function. The blog becomes a chronological record of issues and how they were managed. Once an issue is dead, close the comments and update the post with a summary for the record.

Link blog

Set up a del.icio.us bookmarking account and, using the RSS feeds, syndicate the links (and the notes to each link) to an internal blog. Staff can then subscribe to the blog by RSS or, for those that don’t have this functionality in their agency, via email to receive a list of links relevant to their business.

If you are not using del.icio.us (or a similar tool like Ma.gnolia), I strongly urge you to experiment with it. To get a feel for it, have a look at the State Services Commission’s e-government bookmarks.

External applications

I believe that public sector communicators should trial blogs internally before they make the move to the world wide web, but once you have got your feet wet, you may want to consider some other ways to use this tool.

Crisis management

As Bob notes in his post:

Blogs publish information in real time. It’s obvious to say, but the need to release and respond to information in a timely manner is ever more critical. Organizations that fail to respond quickly to allegations and attacks will in effect be giving tacit approval to their critics’ complaints. Blogs offer a mechanism to respond quickly and affirmatively.
The Good, the Bad, the Spin.

This is never more important than when you are faced with a crisis. Your publics will expect an immediate (online) response and a blog will be far more responsive and versatile in a crisis that a traditional, over-engineered corporate website.

Keep the blog dark while you pre-populate all the pages that you will need: contact details, organizational information, pre-formatted media release templates etc. Then, once the crisis arrives, you flip the switch and you are ready to respond.

Another advantage of a blog in this situation is that you can have multiple authors, updating the blog from anywhere there is Internet or cell phone coverage.

Social media newsroom

Todd Defren, who cooked up the social media release template, has also developed a social media newsroom template and, while it is an excellent template, it may be a little sophisticated for most (New Zealand) government agencies. However, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be thinking about ways to maximize the effectiveness of your media releases. Using a blog as your publishing platform will immediately deliver a host of benefits.

It will mean that your media releases are native to the blogosphere, therefore the nature and extent of their take up will be more visible through trackbacks and specialist search engines. The commenting function will lead to much better engagement (if properly managed) and, best of all, you will be more easily able to use the hRelease microformat to mark them up.

Conclusion

Blogging in the public sector is a relatively new discipline, and I am sure there are other obvious applications for the technology that haven’t occurred to me. If you have any suggestions, please drop them in the comments.

I can’t give you a silver bullet that will work in every case, but I have been testing some of these arguments and have found that, as generic exemplars, they could provide the foundation for a case for a blog as an internal communications tool.

An externally facing blog would require a different set of arguments, with some overlap, but I am assuming that if you are pitching a blog, you would want to trial it as an internal tool first…

Benefits

This is not an exhaustive list, more a starting point. Add any others you think might help the case in the comments.

Multi-purpose

A good blogging tool will support all your communications requirements. It will manage all content types. You can publish text, images, audio, video in just about every format. You can pretty much run your entire comms programme from the one platform.

A blog also gives you channel options. Staff can subscribe for email updates, subscribe to the RSS feed, visit the site, or you could push highlights of the feed onto your Intranet.

Corporate record

Because it is so self-contained, it makes for an excellent argument for your CIO: all the content is in the one place. The entire record of the campaign is easily accessible, searchable and portable. It is an archivists dream.

Make sure that you have a well-defined exit strategy. On the ‘About’ page, detail exactly what the blog is for (cut & paste from your strategic initiatives) and how it will be managed, including the wrap-up.

On that note, make sure that at the end of the programme you include post implementation review material so that the record is complete. This way, in several years time, colleagues will be able to look back and see the complete record of your thorough planning and meticulous execution…

Measurement

I see this as being one of the key points to sell to management as it is a standout: the ability to accurately track how your content is being accessed and consumed. Any half-decent analytics package will allow you to see unique visitors, time spent on each page, entry and exit pages etc. You will be able to track the most popular content (and content types) and manage your communications programme – in real time – accordingly.

Lightweight

Quick, easy and very cheap to install and maintain and integrate with your existing systems. For the range of functionality that is being delivered, this is a spectacularly cost effective and versatile (see next point) solution.

Extensibility

You can add all manner of plugins to enhance the functionality of the site to better achieve your communications objectives. This means that the blog can be specifically tailored to suit your, and your audiences, requirements.

Feedback

The other key point, of course, is the raison d’être of social media: the conversation. Staff can comment and it is completely transparent. You have the option of allowing anonymous comments, or require that people identify themselves in order to participate (see the risks). In any event, everyone will be able to follow the discussions and they will be captured for posterity.

Risks

In all honesty, for an internal communications programme, there aren’t all that many. There is a risk that not everyone will want to contribute, this could be mitigated by enabling anonymous comments, but I would advise you to accept the risk on the grounds that you would want to foster open, honest and transparent engagement.

The only other risk that immediately springs to mind is that all of the other business units will want one. However, I am sure you will be able to come up with some others.

Photo: samdiablo666

So let’s take a look at the growth of social media, and see if we can draw some conclusions about how it is shaping our work environment now, and what it may be like in the next couple of years.

When Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp purchased Myspace in 2005 (for US$580m) the site was seeing 14 million unique visitors a month. At the time he remarked, rather presciently,

We’re looking at the ultimate opportunity… the Internet is media’s golden age.
Wired

In May 2006, there were 51 million unique visitors to the site. Shortly thereafter, in a controversial post (the methodology has been likened to apples and oranges) Hitwise declared Myspace to be in #1 position for all Internet sites.

Setting aside the premature announcement of Myspace’s ascendancy, what is clear is that social networking sites are enjoying a huge swell in membership and are exerting considerable influence in how people interact and shop on the ‘net.

In fact, if you look at the combined total of unique visitors to social networking sites, the numbers per month are around 80 million, and that the ages of these visitors is shifting, with more than 50% of visitors to Myspace now 35 or older.

Social networking has become so popular that recent statistics released by Hitwise show that this year (if it hasn’t already happened) social networks will overtake adult sites as the most heavily trafficked in the US.

Even if you accept the notion that a lot of the adult traffic is now peer2peer and as such is not tracked by Hitwise et al, this still marks a watershed moment in media and in the Internet specifically.

And this is just the social networking sites. It doesn’t include blogs (70 million and 120,000 being created every day), or wikis or the other giant presence in this space, YouTube and other video sites: in July 2006, YouTube served 100 million videos per day to over 63 million unique visitors.

What does this mean?

I think we can safely draw a couple of conclusions from these figures, even if the methodology is a little suspect. First, this is about a social and cultural change. Yes, the catalyst is technology, but to continue to disregard the overwhelming evidence, and influence, of the growth of social media would be foolish.

Second, this rate of growth is only going to increase. This isn’t a passing fad, it is an evolutionary leap in the way people are communicating with each other. One way or another, all of us are going to have to confront, engage and understand what social media means for us and our agencies.

The Digg Revolution

By way of an example of the power of social media to give people an avenue to share their interests and passions, read this Read/Write Web post on the events last week on Digg. It is a salutary reminder of how quickly the media landscape is changing.

Photo: Claudecf

Alas, it appears to be (in the vernacular) fair dinkum. According to the press release, Cyber-twin is

A revolutionary ‘chat-bot’ technology… allowing anyone to create their own personal online clone. Your clone can chat on your behalf through social networks such as MySpace, blogs, dating sites and MSN instant messaging.

Automated social media! It is so close to being pure, unadulterated genius it is scary. Why don’t we take the people out of social media? We could call it, umm, a vacuum?

Seriously, it gets better.

Companies can also have their own MyCyberTwin living on their website, where it is a human-like, intelligent ‘person’ that interacts with their clients, and helps them find information or other people.
Cyber-twin Press Release [PDF 29KB]

Yes, this is a brilliant idea. You can work extremely hard to build your (or your organisations’) reputation via your blog, by writing compelling content and then engaging visitors with your winning personality — and then entrust the whole thing to a bot. (Would that be a sockbot?) That is genuine. That is real.

But fear not. The technology is “based on 40 years of AI research,” so is bound to be superior to, say, your experience trying to get through to your telco when your broadband chokes…

The bottom line is that this thing will never pass the Turing Test and so anyone with any interest whatsoever in their online reputation would be criminally insane to hand it over to this sort of gimmick.

The final indignity in this whole sorry tale is the rather telling note on the Cyber-twin media room, where for their contact details, beside the US contact phone are the words “could be unattended at times.” I guess the irony is lost on them…

Instant Messaging

The first is that it picks Enterprise Instant Messaging as on the rise in government. This is something that I believe we should be pushing for really hard. As I posted last year, this should be in widespread use now, at least as an inter-agency tool, if not hooked into the PSI.

The report notes that there are two reasons for the slow take up in government: IT Managers concerns about it being a vector for malware, and cultural. The cultural reason is substantiated by a quote from an (unnamed) state’s deputy CIO:

Instant Messaging is the biggest waste of time ever created.

This guy obviously hasn’t spent enough time managing his emails…

The authors then go on to note that, in terms of business impact, IM is the communications tool of choice for next generation government workers. And this is, I think, something that cannot be overstated. Every bright, hopeful and shiny-eyed inductee into the public sector today will expect to be able to connnect with their peers using the tools they use in their personal lives. Imagine being shown to your desk/cubicle and there not being a phone: what would be your response?

Semantic Web

The authors also comment on sematic web markup, for both public and corporate content (by corporate, they appear to mean intra- and extranets) as an emerging trend. This is particularly encouraging, for a number of reasons. As the report notes:

…microformats represent a change in direction from a top-down model to define ontologies with RDF/OWL to a bottom-up model to annotate content.

Delivering information across the Web with machine-readable and interpretable semantics offers the potential for enhanced application/site interoperability, automation of information discovery, more contextually relevant searches and options that are difficult or impossible (for example, show doctors in Minneapolis, Minnesota that are open on Saturday morning).

The sematic web should be driven by the public sector. Making information accessible, discoverable and usable should be the minimum standard expected for the expenditure of taxpayer dollars. I have posted on microformats before, so it is encouraging to see that this message is being conveyed back to government business and IT managers through the Gartner briefs.

Social Media

Any excitement about the inclusion of microformats should, however, be tempered by the complete absence of any evaluation of social media. No blogs. No wikis. Nada.

Oddly, The Hype Cycle for Content Management, published a fortnight later (July, 2006), does touch on these tools. Does this mean that government aren’t using these tools, so they don’t rate a mention? I am not so sure. The CM paper notes that, in private enterprise at least, Wikis are “sliding into the trough” (their terminology), with a market penetration of 1-5% of the target audience. It gets weirder. The authors then talk about “RSS: Blogs,” as if RSS was exclusively tied to blogging or the terms were somehow synonymous.

Perhaps this is just a symptom of Gartner’s focus on the tools themselves, rather than the way people use all of these tools to communicate with each other and their publics. In any case, I find it a little disappointing for a firm that is selling analysis to conflate the two. Any other thoughts on the Gartner methodology?

Please note, I am only covering corporate projects here, if you are a public servant and you want to start your own blog, then these may apply, but the advice is intended for government public affairs staff working on their agency projects.

There are 10 principles to consider:

1. Sovereignty: do not use an (external) hosted solution, eg blogger. If this is an agency initiative, then you should host the site in the .govt.nz namespace. I would recommend WordPress, as a powerful, extensible and semantic publishing platform. It is also open source, so it is free and easy to deploy, meaning there is no significant cost to the taxpayer to set up.
2. Access: the site must be Government Web Standards compliant. If it is funded by the taxpayer, then it should be accessible to all New Zealanders. This is another good reason for choosing WordPress as your solution.
3. Transparency: make it very clear who is posting (do not claim that your CE is writing the posts if they are being ghostwritten by you and your team), and how to contact them, online and off. This is one instance where you are not an anonymous public servant. Similarly, (and I know I don’t need to tell you this) no flogs, astroturf or sockpuppets.
4. Trust: do not disclaim the content on the blog/wiki/podcast etc. If you are engaging your publics through these media they should be able to expect a straightforward exchange of ideas and information. If your Legal team intend on vetting every post, the venture is doomed.
5. Fairness: social media is about reciprocity, if you are going to engage and invite comment then accept the good with the bad. Post a very clear comments policy and stick to it. Don’t delete comments because they are critical of your agency or policies.
6. Timeliness: post regularly and be prepared to engage people when it suits them. This may mean checking comments or making edits after work hours and on weekends — be prepared to make that effort.
7. Openness: share content that is an honest reflection of your thinking and position. Don’t set up a social media channel to broadcast your risk-averse, legal-approved and comprehensively qa’ed copy. Remember, this is about engaging people, not boring them into apathy…
8. Ethics: respect what you can legitimately say about your agency/project in public. No matter how small you think your audience, once you hit the ‘publish’ button your content is in the public domain. Make sure you don’t surprise your Minister this way…
9. Participation: don’t just focus on your site and expect your publics to find, engage and maintain a conversation. Get out among similarly oriented communities and participate there. Post comments, email other bloggers and recognize that your site is only part of the solution.
10. Integrity: at all times measure your actions against the Code of Conduct. If you think that you are close to the line with a post, or a comment, check with someone who has some distance from the issue — or hold off posting for overnight. Once it is published, there is no taking it back.

Of course, none of this should come as a surprise. In most cases we are just talking about common sense and sound judgement. It is probably not an exhaustive list either, so if you have suggestions, please add them in the comments.