PAS Hitting the Road versus Social Media

PAS prefer cars

An exchange on an Internet near you:

Digger Dan ‏@MetalDetectorUK Mar 21 Facebook needs an ambassador from @findsorguk to encourage people to report finds! I daily see amazing items being posted! 1 retweet 0 favourites

and the response:

Portable Antiquities ‏@findsorguk @MetalDetectorUK we don’t have the resources to dedicate time to every platform I am afraid. Privacy controls also prevent things being seen

This raises two issues, first is if metal detectorists were as "responsible" as people say (the PAS included even though they know it is not true), every time an unrecorded find was posted up on Facebook, a metal detecting forum etc, there would be five posters asking "have you reported/when are you going to report this to the PAS for recording?" The fact is this is very rarely raised by forum members after a "look-wot-i-found-this-weekend-M8s" post. If "responsible" detectorists instead of being merely declaratively responsible really took responsibility for the health of the hobby themselves, there would be no need for a PAS "ambassador", all responsible detectorists would be ambassadors for the responsible hobby and ensure it was kept that way.

The second point is that the reluctance of the PAS to engage with the broader public using the social media is increasingly puzzling. Outreaching to that public is what they are given those resources for.  By the public, for the public. So why are they not using the capabilities of these media to better advantage? The PAS secret blog is secret and seemingly avoids discussing weightier issues raised in other social media, the public blog has deadeningly boring content, the Facebook page desultory, the webpage a dog's dinner.  Most of what they do (Britain's Secret Treasures) is dumb-down show-and-tell in the worst traditions of peasant television and tabloid journalism. When are we going to see some proper and well-conceived use of social media by the PAS potentially to reach thousands of members of the public? Instead, it seems the PAS prefer to spend their resources paying FLOs overtime and expenses to chug around the countryside in their little cars visiting scattered metal detecting clubs and commercial rallies and outreaching to a few dozen tekkies every so often, and in the process maybe get to do a little Treasure-digging themselves.

Hat tip to Nigel Swift