BC Wildfire Service

Early in the season, I was impressed by the frequency of updates on social media by BCWS. One I read recently annoyed me with all the nonsense rants in the comments. Typical Facebook responses.

I was pleased to see this morning that BCWS will be doing more moderation of comments. Those of us who wish to glean information, not opinion , will have less clutter on their Facebook feed.

"We strive to provide accurate and timely information to the public on our social media channels.

Social media is a key source of information for many, as well as a public forum – and while the comments section can be a place for meaningful discussion, it can also quickly turn to impolite discourse.

Please note that moving forward, our moderation policy, which has been in place for many years, will be more strictly adhered to to reduce distraction from important emergency and public education information being shared.

Our policy, which is shared in our ‘About’ section on Facebook, indicates that we will remove posts which:

-contain abusive, obscene, indecent or offensive language

-include defamatory, abusive, harassing or hateful remarks or make unproven or unsupported accusations against individuals or organizations

-constitute spam, promote services or products

-invade anyone’s privacy or impersonates anyone

-are far off-topic

-are posted without the necessary rights, licences and consents

-encourage conduct that may or would constitute a criminal offence or give rise to civil liability, or that otherwise violates any local, provincial, national or international law or regulation anywhere in the world

-contain long embedded URLs

-contain excessive links or contain code

-identify any publicly-elected representative or candidate regardless of their political affiliation, whether those comments are supportive or critical

-are contrary to the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Please keep these things in mind as you engage with the our page. Comments that do not adhere to the stated policy components will be removed. Those that continue to violate our moderation policy will be disabled from posting further.

Nearly everything we post involves someone’s community, the hard work of first responders, or the natural habitat we all share in B.C. – let’s do our best to show respect, support and humility this wildfire season."