Idaho Fish and Game can’t Face(book) the online ugliness
WILDLIFE AGENCIES -- After wading briefly into the world of social media, the Idaho Fish and Game Department has had to "unfriend" itself on Facebook.
Comment threads on issues such as wolves got so ugly, it was taking too much effort to monitor the traffic.
"We were spending way too much time looking at it. We had some employees who were trying to moderate [Facebook] in the middle of the night, which was crazy," Mike Keckler, chief of IDFG's Bureau of Communications told the Boise Weekly. "I was doing that for a while, and realized I was literally losing sleep over this."
Read onfor the rest of the Boise Weekly report.
From the Boise Weekly:
Keckler told Citydesk the agency tried blocking some individuals from further posts, "but then we decided to pull that back. Over time, things would self-moderate. But then something would occur and the comments would take off again."
Keckler said IDFG had no plans to make its Facebook page live again anytime soon. Instead, he indicated that the agency will try to find a way to introduce two-way dialogue on its website.
Keckler said the comment involved several topics, with more than a few aimed at wolf management.
"There were some pretty caustic arguments, both pro and con, about wolves," he said. "And we had a number of people on both sides of arguments calling on us to moderate the page better. But we just didn't have the time or manpower to properly moderate it."
