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Published on the ISAF web site; 

International Sailing Federation
Guidelines for the Use of Social Media
by ISAF Race Officials 

I know it is hard in a "commission-run" federation, especially one that has to operate with people from all over the world and one that gets "new" commissions every four years. But I've been waiting for this since 2010. It took only four years to get to this one piece of paper.....
Here is the link: ROC Social Media Guidelines

Some excerpts:

1.2 Restricting the use of social media is not designed to inhibit freedom of speech or rights to privacy, but it is inevitable that appointment as a race official means the official must limit their use of such tools in order to comply with their duties as an official.

2.2 A competitor can say to the media that a decision is bad, the call was wrong, the race committee or the measurer made a mistake etc. But,except in authorised circumstances, a race official must not disclose confidential information. In particular:

(a) Except the official facts found, conclusion and decision, a judge serving on a panel should not disclose any other information about the hearing or the panel’s discussions.

3.1 The spirit of blogs in all sports should be to attract people towards our disciplines, explaining cases by authoritative judges, race officers, umpires and measurers, in order to offer a service at all level from the beginners to the professional competitors. Blogs are an interactive tool through which everybody can give an opinion and discuss interesting points (such as decisions or particular data) concerning the sport.
3.2 If an ISAF Race Official runs a blog, he should inform the ISAF Office of this fact.

4.4 It is acceptable for race officials to be Facebook friends with competitors (but not to be “fans” of their teams or organisations). However, race officials must be aware that information they put on their profile during an event must not give competitors who are Facebook friends an advantage or access to information which others do not have (see below).

4.5 No comments should be made about the performance of competitors at any time

List of things to do:

• Screen Facebook for "fanning". [check]
• Print these Guidelines and reread them before clicking on the Publish button of every post. [check]
• Never post about issues in a running regatta - wait until the issue has no longer any influence on the outcome - generalize the subject without revealing specific information (make it about the rules - not about the event) - and then write about it....
  Hmmm, I might run into some difficulty with 2.2(a), also in light of the "no time limit" in 2.1, because any opinion I might have, is coloured by the information, but I'll work on that. [......]
• Write to the ISAF office.(Guideline 3.2) [check]
• .....

Can I now get back to blogging, please?

J.