Really @NHL? Is It Necessary To Fill The Whole Background With Legalese?
from the read-the-fine-print dept
So, with the NHL season now under way this week, the NHL is running a twitter promotion where you have to guess the winner of each of the games this Saturday. Tweet the correct winners to @NHL and you could win yourself a trip for two to a regular season game of your choosing. The promotion is fine and all, but what I was surprised at was the ridiculous background image that is on the NHL twitter page: an image of the entire legal "Official Rules" in both English and French.Seriously? Whose idea was it to fill the entire background with legalese? It is barely even legible. A simple link would have sufficed, but it almost seems like a childish response to a lawyer's request to put these rules up on their twitter page. Then again, in reading through the extensive rules, I was reminded of my favorite part of any sweepstakes in which Canadians take part, the math question.
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Why?
The results can be catastrophic.
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Hey there! NHL is using Twitter.
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Sorry, but
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Actually this seems OK
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Re: Actually this seems OK
If people are bitching that Google has it's privacy policy on their about page and not the main page, how douse it look that the NHL has their rules behind two clicks? That, and there's no indication that one has to scroll down to see the link to the rules after the first click. I got confused for a second clicking on the rules link and getting the news page.
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Re: Re: Actually this seems OK
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Error in link
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Re: Error in link
Good catch, Greg.. The link has been fixed now. Sorry about that.
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Also
"The rules were clea...um, well the rules were POSTED behind our tweets."
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not quite
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NHL Twitter Background
Just as FYI, the purpose of temporarily changing our background was to: A) let everyone know that as easy as this is to play, there are a handful of rules and guidelines that need to be followed; and B) comply with US and Canadian regulations around contests of this sort (they require that rules be posted in the environment in which the contest is taking place).
So at the end of the day, we simply wanted to include as many fans that want to participate as possible. Hopefully, the 5 days of our temporary Twitter background won't overshadow the NHL giving away a trip for two.
Always feel free to reach out to me @umassdilo.
Thanks again,
Mike D.
Director of Social Media Marketing
NHL
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Re: NHL Twitter Background
1. If you wanted to let people know there were a handful of rules for the contest, did you really think that the best way to do so was to place barely legible text on the background, part of which was obscured by the tweets? Wouldn't it be better (assuming it complies with US/Canadian law) to just say so with a link to the rules page?
2. If the other purpose WAS to comply with US/Canadian law, and you indicate that my suggestion above doesn't do so, how does barely legible text that might be partially obscured accomplish compliance?
In any case, thanks for the direct response, I don't see enough of it on TechDirt, unfortunately (you there yet, Lily?). I'm looking forward to this season and will make a point to follow the NHL twitter accounts.
Go Hawks!
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Re: Re: NHL Twitter Background
You know, they say an airplane never crashes for just one reason. It's a sequence of events.
Here's how this came to pass.
First, the contest went live when the story and rules were posted to NHL.com, yesterday morning.
Next, I took the NHL.com link and pasted it into our Twitter bio - which is, as you suggest, seemingly sufficient in terms of directing people to the contest rules. However, Twitter kept refusing the updates to our page settings, so the link would not appear. No big deal, right? We'll just keep Tweeting out the link to the rules ...
Except, we discovered a technical issue with the link to the rules. The formatting of the rules in French somehow got garbled on NHL.com, and they needed to be reformatted and reposted.
So while our team was fixing the NHL.com link, the rules needed to be posted somewhere for fans to access. And as a "fix" I converted our Twitter background into a copy of the rules.
The NHL.com link was restored in short order, but I since decided that, just to be safe, I would leave the rules on our Twitter background through Saturday so we would be in complete compliance.
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Re: Re: Re: NHL Twitter Background
Thanks so much for the response. Your explanation makes complete sense, and I was wondering why you keep on tweeting out the link to the rules. That said, the underlying absurdity still remains -- the legal tail is wagging the proverbial dog, much to the detriment of everyone.
Case in point, hidden in that huge bunch of unreadable legal text is perhaps the one rule that people should pay attention to:
I completely missed that one. That said, kudos to you for individually replying to people who have entered to inform them of this rule.
Best of luck with the promotion. I hope my entry wins.. ;-)
Cheers,
Dennis.
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Re: NHL Twitter Background
handful - you keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.
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Re:
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You should see it...
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Even Archimedes had principles!
Question: trisect an angle using only a compass and straight edge, and prove your answer correct.
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Really botched
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