How to Write Community Guidelines
Create clear, usable rules that make expectations easier to understand and enforce.
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Write for real situations
Good guidelines explain expected behavior in plain language and give moderators enough clarity to act consistently. Cover respect, relevance, promotion, privacy, safety, and enforcement.
Keep them usable
A short set of understandable principles is more likely to be read than a legalistic wall of text. Link to detailed policies only where necessary.
A simple implementation framework
- Define the member outcome. Write the useful change the community exists to support.
- Identify the recurring behavior. Decide what members should do weekly or monthly to reach that outcome.
- Remove friction. Make the next useful action obvious in onboarding, navigation, and programming.
- Observe real behavior. Combine member conversations with a small number of relevant metrics.
- Improve one bottleneck at a time. Avoid changing the platform, pricing, programming, and positioning simultaneously.
Common mistake
The most common mistake is solving the visible symptom before understanding the underlying job. More content, more notifications, more channels, or more features can increase activity while making the member experience less coherent.
What good looks like
A healthy community is understandable. Members know why they joined, what to do next, where to ask for help, and how participation connects to something they care about. The operating system should make those behaviors easier rather than merely creating more places to click.
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