How to Write Community Guidelines People Actually Respect

Rules vs. guidelines

Most communities write rules: a long, defensive list trying to pre-cover every possible bad behavior. It grows forever, nobody reads it, and members still find gaps. What you actually want are guidelines — a small set of clear principles that members can internalize and apply to situations you never anticipated. Principles scale; rule lists don't.

Step 1: Start with a few principles, not many rules

Aim for a handful of principles a member can actually remember. For example: *assume good faith, keep it relevant, no harassment, respect privacy.* Each principle should be broad enough to cover many situations and clear enough that a reasonable person knows what it means. If your guidelines need a table of contents, they're rules, not guidelines.

Step 2: Explain the reasoning

This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the most important. People follow norms they understand and resent rules that feel arbitrary. For each principle, say *why* it exists in one line. "No precise location sharing — it protects members from being tracked or doxxed" earns compliance in a way that a bare prohibition never will. (See How Clear Authorship Builds Trust and What Is Doxxing?.)

Step 3: Write for the good-faith majority

Your guidelines have two audiences, and you must not confuse them. The good-faith majority needs clarity and a sense of the culture. The bad-faith minority needs enforcement, not more words — they'll exploit any loophole regardless. So write guidelines warmly for the people who want to belong, and handle bad actors through consistent action, not by adding another paragraph everyone else has to read.

Step 4: Make them concrete with examples

Abstract principles get misread. A few short examples of what's encouraged and what crosses the line remove most ambiguity. "Encouraged: asking for help. Not okay: posting someone's address." Examples do more work than definitions.

Step 5: Enforce consistently — this is the whole game

Guidelines are only as real as their enforcement. The fastest way to destroy trust is inconsistency: enforcing against some people and not others, or only when you feel like it. Members forgive strict rules far more readily than unfair ones. Apply the same standard to everyone, including the popular and the powerful. (See How Moderation Shapes Community Trust and Community Standards Without Performative Enforcement.)

Step 6: Treat them as living

Good guidelines evolve. When a genuinely new situation arises that your principles don't cleanly cover, clarify — but resist the urge to bloat. Usually the answer is "this principle already covers it," not "we need a new rule."

The takeaway

The best community guidelines are short, reasoned, warmly written for the people who want to belong, and enforced the same way for everyone. Principles people understand beat rules people resent.