Historic Environment Scotland’s social media channels and blogs are places where you can share your thoughts with other people who are passionate about Scotland’s past, places and traditions.
We aim to post on our social media channels almost every day with tips and advice, inspirational stories and the latest news about many different aspects of the historic environment.
We love to read your comments, hear your feedback or suggestions, and we’re happy to answers questions where can.
To ensure everyone has a positive experience, we need your help in keeping our social media channels and blogs safe, inspiring and enjoyable spaces. These are our social media house rules:
1. Understand the platform.
Each social media platform has its own Terms of Use which outlines how you (and we) are allowed to use the platform. We also have Terms and Conditions for our websites and blogs. We recommend familiarising yourself with those terms, as well as our Privacy Notice.
2. Speak with respect.
Differences of opinion are to be expected – but personal attacks are not. We don’t accept the use of obscene, violent, abusive, discriminatory, defamatory, unlawful or threatening language or imagery in the digital spaces we manage.
We’re happy to see debate on our channels, but if you post misinformation we reserve the right to remove it.
Help us create a safe space to celebrate every aspect of Scotland’s historic environment.
3. Be original.
We love when you share videos, photos, poems and more with us on social media – but you must own the rights or have permission to share something. That means only posting content you’ve created. You are responsible for the content that you choose to share – don’t share content with us that infringes on someone else's rights.
We might share the content you post on the same social media platform with our followers – so if you Tweet, we might Retweet it on our Twitter channels.
If we want to share your content on a different social media platform or on our blog, we will always ask your permission first. In these situations, we give credit by tagging your social media handle or by giving your name if you give us permission to.
Even if you give us permission to share your content on our social media channels or another platform, the copyright ownership will always remain with you. You can ask us to remove your content from our social media channels or blog at any time.
4. Stay on topic.
Got a question about visiting a castle? Want to share your joy about a newly listed building? Fancy challenging us to identify a place from a historic photograph? Just like you, we love content that’s relevant to our interests.
If we feel you’re trying to detract from our messages or the conversations of others happening on our pages, we may delete your posts. Similarly, if you try to dominate conversations with posts about your own concerns, or share fake news, we may delete your posts.
Please keep chain posts, commercial advertising and repetitive posts to your own social media channels. We don’t engage with posts and comments of a commercial or political nature.
Repeat offenders may be banned.
5. Respect privacy.
It’s all too easy to share personal information about yourself or other people on social media. We’re not responsible for the privacy or security practices of social media platforms or users.
Public posts and comments in our digital spaces that include email addresses, phone numbers or other personal or identifiable information may be removed. If you need to share personal information, you are very welcome to send us a private message or contact us by email instead.
6. Be part of our community.
Let us know if any of the content or comments on our social media channels violate the platform’s Terms of Use, or report it to the platform directly.
We believe everyone should be able to access our services on their preferred platform, but users who don’t adhere to our House Rules may have their comments hidden or removed, not receive a response to direct messages and repeat offenders may be blocked. Users posting obscene, violent, abusive, discriminatory, defamatory, unlawful or threatening content may be reported to the associated social media platform.
7. Know what to expect.
Our core office hours are between 9am and 5pm GMT from Monday to Friday, excluding national holidays.
Our social media channels are actively managed during core office hours, but our channels are only monitored for urgent enquiries outside of these hours. We aim to respond to enquiries as quickly as we can, but we are a large organisation and some questions can take longer to investigate.
Unfortunately, we’re only able to respond to enquiries in English and Gaelic. You can find out more about how we handle enquiries in our Service Standards.