Trying to get it right from the beginning
This Article covers three topics
1) Motive 2) Copyright Law 3) Sharing
Firstly, anyone can be a campaigner, but not everyone can be a GOOD campaigner. What do I mean by this?
So first up, the motive for campaigning. It can start off good, campaigning for all of the right reasons, but some people allow their enthusiasm to translate to ego - then the ego takes over the original motive.
We need to keep our heads down, avoid trouble and work hard.
I look at a lot of FB profiles every day looking for Officers for Legalise Cannabis International. A lot of the stuff I read, I get the impression of a lot of self promotion. Seems like most people want to be THE person that wants to get the credit for legalizing cannabis. A lot of people are looking for fame. Maybe to be on a TV talk show. etc etc etc.
As campaigners, I think that we need to keep a handle on this and maintain an humble and friendly attitude. How do we do this? We do this by SHARING WITH OTHERS IN THE CAMPAIGN.
The Psychology of Sharing
The campaign to legalize cannabis is a global campaign comprised of many people.
For example, on FB, if we leave a comment after someone else, THANK THEM for their comment by saying something like "Great points, Peter" (or whatever to whoever). By doing this, we are publicly acknowledging other campaigners - and by doing so, we will gain a lot of respect in the campaign. I'm not talking about "crawling" or patting each other on the back, just an acknowledgment.
We then connect with that person on a personal level. By doing this, our networking increases - AND THIS THEN ASSISTS THE CAMPAIGN.
As time goes by, some of the more experienced campaigners will notice your personal campaign. You may even get FaceBook friendship requests from "famous" campaigning people.
These kind of people are important contacts to have - but they may not ask you or accept you as a friend unless they see, over a prolonged period of time, that you are genuinely working your butt off in the campaign - and ONLY for the sake of the campaign and nothing else. In other words, a "safe pair of hands" - someone they can trust as a friend and who will not damage their good reputation.
Time for Some Spring Cleaning
This kind of serious campaigning starts by making our FB Walls up to campaigner standard. People who spend a lot of time playing FarmVille, Mafia Wars etc are usually not committed campaigners. If they were, they would not have the time to play those Apps, as they are very time consuming (not to mention, expensive.) That's not to say that people may be working hard on another Campaign. A lot of people spend a lot of their time on Causes, which is very worthwhile. I have a very good friend who gives their all for the animals and the wildlife, a wonderful person indeed.
Also, maybe we try to remove most, if not all, religion from our Profile Info. Many people are put off by religion - okay, we might not be, but let us not have anything on our Profile that distracts from the Campaign.
All of these things are down to the individual to work out, and I acknowledge that. My purpose here is only to highlight things, in our campaigning lives, that we might like to consider. Personally, I love rock music, but I don't say so on my Profile. I sometimes enjoy talking with a friend about this band and that and this album and little anecdotes etc, but I don't have the time to have friends who are solely into music, so I keep music away from my profile. Same with books and movies. At the end of the day, we each find our comfort zone, and what works for us.
2) Respecting Copyright Law
We like that Note on somebody's profile, or that excellent Discussion that has a big Research work?
We don't copy it - it's not ours - we link to it instead.
I would like to suggest that we study the basic internet protocols of copyright law. Here are some basic links that we can read, study and surf from:
3) Sharing with Others
Sharing Etiquette
I am making a point to include "sharing etiquette," as some people can get upset about this.
1) Click on a friend's link, read the post
2) If you like the article, look for a couple of lines that you think define the article, or a sentence or two that jumps out at you and copy the lines of text, (control or command+c) then click your "back" browser button
3) Back on your friend's post, tick "like" - after all, we like it enough to share it, right?
4) Maybe add a comment to your friend's post - even if it is just a few simple words like "great post, thanks, shared!" or even discuss certain points of the article that you just read - this is how great threads are formed - by interesting discussion of key points. Some threads go on to have hundreds of comments on them and are very interesting indeed.
5) Click on "share" and add the copied text from the article in "quotation marks" or add a comment of your own, and add it to your own Wall
Sharing Psychology
It's about people isn't it - social networking, they call it.
It's about letting people know that their work is appreciated and that we are sharing each other's posts.
So we tick "like", add a comment maybe, and click "share."
We are not "vagabond thieves" are we? No we are not.
When we "Share" a good post from another campaigner's Wall, we need to make sure that we leave the "via" tag intact. This is the respectful way of sharing together on FaceBook.
When the shared item appears on our Wall, it will show that we have this link from the other person's Wall. By leaving the "via" link intact we are acknowledging the campaign work of our friends. Friends of ours will then want to make friends with that person.
I have a simple rule. If one of my friends takes links from my Wall on a *continual* basis and keeps removing the "via" tag, I remove them from my Friends list. No discussion. Removed. I do not hassle with other FaceBookers. I am too busy campaigning and don't have the time. How do I know they are my links? In general I don't, but often I post hot news items that are "firsts" (or great "seconds" :-) It is at this time that I know. Also, people who do this tend to take more than one link, so it appears obvious that they are taking my stuff. I know that there is the option to remove the "via" tag and that a lot of people do remove it. I think that given FaceBook's philosophy of social networking that it's a shame that they even put the option there in the first place, but that is just my opinion. Well, what am I talking about here? This whole article is just my opinion lol
If someone keeps on sharing your posts by removing the "via" tag or without ticking "like", then maybe send them a friendly private message to let them know you are unhappy. This happened with me a while back and when I mentioned this in a message, the person was so nice, apologetic and friendly. I told them that their Wall was full of likes and comments, because of my shared posts that they had copied and yet my Wall was looking all bare and sad ;-(
I'm not saying that we should be constantly monitoring other people's every move, but I do believe that we need to acknowledge other people's work, through the posts that they feed to their Wall. By doing so, people will respect us more, by seeing that we are on-the-level people.
Another feature on FB is the ability to add a via tag from a friend's link on a Group Wall. To do this, add the words via @"typename" and the person will be linked into the text and a copy will be added to their Wall (as long as posting to their Wall is not disabled.) More info on this here.
Here is REAL sharing
And if the post, you just shared from your friend's Wall, is really super - go back to your friend's Wall and discuss it there. Why do we seem to expect that people are going to grace OUR Wall with lots of great and cool comments, when we can go and share out thoughts on our friend's Wall, the person who originally posted the comment for us to share?
So many times I have seen great, original posts on people's Walls, with no "likes" or comments. These are posts that have been shared by many people, yet the original post is bare. This is sad, imo, and we need to consider and respect the original poster for making such a great post for us to share.
We are not "vagabond thieves" are we? No we are not. Glad we agree.
Next up - What are we sharing?
Avoiding Damaging Publicity
Don't share any articles that will work against your campaign, no matter how funny or amusing they may look at first sight. They are put there deliberately, to catch your attention, so that you will pass them on so that they will enter the public consciousness and become publicly accepted truths.
Remember the story about how marijuana was found in a terrorist complex, after they were all killed? Oh, how cool that they were all smoking marijuana - NOT. This article is intended to equate cannabis with terrorism. If we repost an article like this, we are helping to reinforce this outrageous concept. Let them push their own crazy equations their own selves. No link here from me. Not ever.
Become a Press Commentator
Sign up for a log-in account with every newspaper you come across to be able to comment on their articles. A lot of campaigners have still not understood how important it is for a campaigner to have a mainstream voice within the mainstream Press. Others just cannot be bothered to take the time to do it, maybe because they only want to have a "fun" campaign experience.
Create an email folder - inside of one central folder - for each one, as and when you get your new log-in password, so that you will easily be able to find it, if you get logged out, and comment on every relevant article you come across on the internet.
Newspaper editors pay great attention to the number of comments an article receives. We may have never considered this point, but it's true all the same. Editors use the results to determine "trending topics" which then determine how low or high a profile they will allocate to the subject, which then determines how often they will publish on that subject.
Become a Press Commentator - you'll be glad that you did.
Washing Dirty Linen in Public
Sometimes I read people's Walls and read about problems with some group or person and who said what etc etc and it's just plain awful. Scandal and competitiveness - and that's not what we're here for. It is SO EASY to post a reply and get drawn into the fray. RESIST. Don't do it. The last thing anyone needs on FB is enemies. If it's so bad, I just say "Cheers!" and walk away. That's why there is a "block" facility if we need to use it. We don't have to read these people if we don't want to.
If we have any problem with a friend, we always send them a private message to try and sort it out. Posting the problem, with the person's name, on our Wall is certain to cause problems and draw sides, not to mention that it will appear to others that we are whinging. Not a good idea.
Resist, at all costs, the temptation to make comments like "Wake Up Sheeple" or "People Wake Up" on your Wall. People don't like to read what they may interpret as self-aggrandizing comments and the first people who will read them will most probably be your friends. Many people regard their friends as "peeps" - and this is an attitude that really is arrogant, imo. All friends are equal - there ARE no peeps. You may have noticed that the people who have a high opinion of themselves are usually the ones who get into the most blitzing, unfriendly, public arguments - along with their attendant fall-outs (that we all end up reading about.)
Our primary purpose as campaigners on the internet is as EDUCATORS.
The more we share, the more the knowledge moves around. The more people who share it, the more the results expand as the information extends from the FB community and enters into mainstream society. Then the public begin to discuss it in the mainstream press and politicians get to hear about it as a "trending topic" (because they're always on the look-out for a popular topic and angle to boost their reputations and careers) and it then becomes a political debate - and, hopefully, our objectives will be realized. This is what we want, right? That's the plan!
Replenish the Troops
We need to be on the lookout for potential campaigners and bring them onboard. How? By becoming friends and messaging with them. Listening to what they have to say, sharing our background and stories with them. If they sound sincere and get busy working, we might like to share all of our best campaigner friends with them.
We teach by example and kindness - encouraging individuals so as to bring more people into the Campaign. I did this with a certain person, about a year ago and they are now one of the best cannabis campaigners on FB. This person is now organising rallies and talking with family, friends and strangers in the shopping mall - making their campaign in their everyday life. I am so proud of this person, I cannot begin to tell you!
Bottom line: If we do not have the correct attitude in campaigning and if we do not share our campaign, then we will have A FAILED PERSONAL CAMPAIGN - because people will regard us as pushy, full of ourselves and up to no good and thus we will NOT have a good reputation within the cannabis campaigning community.
Let us remember this: We are members of the worldwide campaign for the legalization of cannabis. As such, we need to work together within the Campaign, which means working respectfully with other people. We need to remember this and make it a part of our work ethic.
Further tips on campaign etiquette:
1) Think twice before you go on the record with anything. Past comments made in haste can come back to haunt you.
2) Don't engage in any hassle that you can live without. Any problems we are experiencing need to be addressed to the individual by private message. Don't damage your own reputation by posting problems to your Wall - it will almost always cause further problems.
3) Don't publicly name someone who you are in debate with - it causes the drawing of sides. Much better to just reference the person by saying "a campaigner."
4) However hard, ignore people who deliberately taunt you - this is important, because if you engage, it will damage your campaign. People don't like to read about in-fightings.
5) Don't lift friends' info from their Profile or *personal* comments from their Wall, to post to your own Wall (or elsewhere) without your friend's permission - info and comments may not be posted or viewable to "everybody" which means that THEY ARE NOT PUBLIC COMMENTS.
6) Always put quotation marks "---" around other people's general quotes - if we don't do this, we are projecting these comments as our own, which is, in effect, stealing.
7) Reference all the pertinent comments you make with links. We cannot expect people to believe what we say about Press topics that have no link.
8) Bring your own alternative touch of vision to whatever subject you're talking about. People like to hear a fresh and bright individual touch.
9) If we are not able warriors when we start out, fershur, we soon learn to be. As one of my good friends always (publicly) says: "This campaign is not for the feint hearted" and many people drop out of the campaign because they have been beaten down and failed to respond intelligently - they let temper get the better of them - or even more common, get suckered into personal abuse, and then spend a great deal of their campaigning time replying to abuse - and adding more to it as they go along. Sad, but true. I personally know many such folk. They don't speak out anymore, they just post links occasionally, if at all. Resist personal abuse at all costs!
10) Learn wisely from your mistakes. We don't need to make them more than once.
Off the top of my head, that's it. The rest is learnt from experience.
Good Luck and Best Wishes in your campaigning!
Fabio Santacroce
Campaigner for cannabis use legalization since 1992
Saturday August 21, 2010
