Council calls time on Facebook comments

Waipā District Council is following Nelson City Council’s lead by turning off comments on information-only posts on its Facebook page from today.

The South Island council announced last week that it was turning off comments amidst concerns of misplaced rage, unfair criticism of staff, and misinformation.

Their communications team had reviewed three months of Facebook data and approximately 25 percent of comments on its pages were from 46 people.

Chief executive Garry Dyet said Waipā District Council was in a similar position with a few individuals dominating Facebook interactions, the majority of which were doing so in a negative way.

“We welcome healthy debate but what we have seen in recent months is an uprising of disrespect towards staff and, most recently, between the community itself. Our staff have been subjected to name calling and other nasty comments and that is simply not ok,” Dyet said.

“I’m simply not prepared to provide platforms so that staff, elected members and our contractors can be abused, ridiculed and discredited. Nor do I want to see good hearted folk who give us meaningful feedback being cut down in a vitriolic way,” he said.

“At the moment our limited resources are being sucked up into pandering to a small group of people and our time would be far better spent delivering more positive things for our community.”

The council would continue to welcome respectful interactions with the community via phone, email, or face-to-face, and would still use its social channels as a means to garner feedback alongside other channels on occasion.

“We want respectful interactions with our community. That is the very reason we are here. However, the time spent reacting to keyboard agitators is taking staff away from doing things that can really make a difference.”