How to Write Community Guidelines
If you’ve never written Community Guidlines before, where do you begin? Instead of staring at a blinking cursor, here's a template and step-by-step guide to get you on the right track.
Start with Mission
First, go back to your community mission and guiding principles. Don’t have those yet? Try this guide. Your guidelines should remind your members of why they would care about rules and regulations in the first place: they keep the community safe and its purpose clear.
In your guidelines, include one paragraph about the space's mission and your community's values. You could drop your own mission into a template, something like the below:
Welcome to [COMMUNITY NAME]! We are thrilled to give you a warm welcome to this space.
Our mission is to [STATEMENT OF MISSION]. To that end, we will be working hard to ensure that we align our actions with that purpose. These Community Guidelines should not only help you understand how to act within the community but also help you understand what to expect from others in this space.
Rules-Based Or Values-Based?
There are two ways to write guidelines: rule-based or values-based.
Rules-based guidelines typically list Do’s and Don’t that users must follow. While they are faster to write and often easier to start with, users usually skim over these and perceive them as heavy-handed. For that reason, values-based guidelines are usually a better choice.
Values-based guidelines are guidelines that begin with the values (e.g., “We value critical dialogue”) and then create guidelines that help members understand how to reinforce that value (e.g., “We encourage you to cite credible references to sources that back up your argument”). These guidelines are often written in the affirmative rather than the negative. Airbnb provides one example of values-based guidelines for their entire platform:
Caption: Airbnb Community Guidelines, Retrieved November 2018.
Values-based guidelines are ideal, but if your community does have rules-based guidelines today, don’t worry, you can switch to values-based over time. Many community guidelines actually include some combination of both of these styles, such as Amazon’s Community Guidelines below:
Amazon Community Guidelines, Retrieved November 2018.
The Essential Elements You Need
Let’s not overcomplicate things. There are a few essential elements you need to address in your guidelines. Almost all community guidelines should include rules around the following:
Copyright or intellectual property violations (most common of all)
Illegal activity
Any harassment or hateful conduct, including discrimination, hate speech, bullying, or targeted attacks
Impersonating other users (less of an overt problem on pseudonymous platforms)
Spam and scams
Sexual content or nudity
Any violent conduct: extreme violence, graphic violence, threats, gore, obscenities
Harming others or acting maliciously
Sharing of private information (a.k.a doxing)
Linking policies: the ability (or lack thereof) to promote products/services within the community
Beyond these essentials, your community will have its own specific needs and challenges, so don’t just copy this list and call it a day. Figure out what rules are most important for your specific mission and culture. And then run it by legal.
Start With What You Have
While writing your first community guidelines might feel daunting, starting somewhere and refining as you go is important. You will need to revisit and rewrite your guidelines as your community changes. How do you know when to revisit? You may see an uptick in members’ reporting other member posts, a higher volume than normal of new violations, membership changes significantly, or if you bring on a group of new moderations.
The good news is that many experienced people work on guidelines every day. You can find guidelines of brands you admire and use them to inform what's appropriate for you.
Strong Examples of Guidelines
The information on this website is provided for information purposes, and should not be construed as legal advice.
