Today Cisco announced a small change to their corporate Internet Postings Policy. The change states that Internet postings that discuss topics relevant to Cisco’s business must include a statement of affiliation (i.e. the poster works for Cisco) and a disclaimer that the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Cisco. Overall this is a reasonable policy, and a positive move by Cisco to encourage transparency and openness in their business.
My only question (which I submitted as a comment on Cisco’s blog) is whether the new policy requires the poster to identify themselves by name, or whether they’re allowed to remain anonymous while simply stating their affiliation. The balance here is between privacy of the user whom may wish to remain anonymous, transparency of the poster’s intent and affiliation, and perhaps even security/authentication. (i.e. how do we know that an anonymous poster’s claim of affiliation with Cisco is real?) I’m not sure what the right answer might be, but hopefully we’ll soon find out what Cisco’s answer is. Or maybe I’m just being pedantic or worrying about edge cases. *shrug*
For what it’s worth my employer is Savvis, Inc. Any views expressed are mine and not necessarily those of my employer, family, coworkers, friends, etc.
1 response so far ↓
1 JeanetteGibson // Mar 25, 2008 at 11:53
Hi there. I work for Cisco in corporate communications and worked on our policy…yes, we are asking employees to identify themselves by name and also suggest using their Cisco email in any response related to the Company. Good discussion. We’re always open to feedback.
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