AUTHOR NOTE
This was originally posted on my WordPress blog, which I have deleted after migrating the blog's posts to this website in November 2025. Differences from the original are minimal and include: adding paragraphs to reduce the wall of text, adding in a break from the series intro, grammatical adjustments throughout the post, adjusting text formatting a little, and linking properly to my Bluesky account.building your community
Alright, this post was not supposed to be the second one of this series, but I am pushing it up after a really dumb situation happened on Bluesky about two weeks after I gained access to the platform; one that could have easily been prevented had there been solid and inclusive community standards or code of conduct (because if they cared about these things the situation would have been caught early). If you missed the first post in this series, get started building your community before diving into this post. I’ll leave my thoughts on the whole Bluesky situation on other platforms (unless you already follow me on Bluesky) to keep the focus on the content of this series. In this post, let me talk to you about community standards and codes of conduct, and how they fold into the activity and health of your community.
What’s the difference between community standards and a code of conduct? Honestly, I’ve found that they can be interchangeable phrases in the industry. Both seem to stem from the legal aspects of running a business - community standards being around how community members are expected to behave, and a code of conduct being more of the legal side of things related to ethics, but both should have consequences tied to them when it comes to your community space. I tend to call them Community Guidelines myself, but you should choose the term that your company leans on.
The best example of guidelines I found recently is the set Replit has. It clearly states the expectations of the community and how to treat each other, how they should handle their personal information on a public space, and are explicit in the consequences for not following them. While consequences hardly need to be public, if you are a product or company who prides itself with open communication and transparency, you should have them available to your community to align with your values.
While I believe that all communities have standards, not every one does. Most have generic ones to cover the legal bases of discrimination, really do not care what happens to community members, and allows them to moderate themselves. In recent years, the latter has proved to fuel bad actors by allowing abusive behavior towards marginalized groups. Community standards are a must as a company or product running social spaces, imho. This not only ensures a safe community for the users but the employees, too! You can’t hold anyone accountable for their actions in your community if you have no guidelines - there’s nothing to reference when you say that a person is not behaving in a way that is tolerated within your community.
Places like Reddit and Discord have enough terms of use that companies can fall back on for illegal activities in which they can use to remove bad actors to avoid more harm. This helps in a couple different ways: there’s a trust and safety team dedicated to the high level protection of their users, and they offer tools to allow community moderators and leaders to curate standards for their own spaces (AutoMod and moderator bots, for example). These are your best case scenarios when using a social platform because you can escalate to Reddit or Discord employees if you need to but also customize guidelines to your own community.
Something I find open-source or developer-focused companies are starting to eyeball is No Code of Conduct. Avoid this. While a lot of cishet white tech bros think that everyone can have conversations without treating each other like assholes (see: Xitter), the reality is that people rarely think on how their words impact others. If you want a community that flourishes outside of your product, having community guidelines will ensure all members feel safe and heard - especially if you follow consistent moderation practices and have trusted members as moderators (a topic for a future blog). Users who see they have no consequences will abuse a situation and quickly become bad actors in your community.
Okay, I’ve given an example of what looks great and what you probably should avoid when it comes to how your guidelines should be set up. How does this all roll into and affect the activity and health of your community? Well, healthy community standards often end up building strong communities that self-moderate. This should be an end goal for your community - yes, you SHOULD work your way out of a job, that’s how you know you were successful! Having these built up will give your community moderators who volunteer their time something to point to when they are attempting to keep peace.
But wait! It also gives those who are not volunteer mods something to point to if they feel the guidelines have been broken! This empowers everyone in your community to encourage psychological safety following the guidance from the company representatives. Having a way to escalate up to either the social platform or a company rep who maintains communities will give the community another path to ensure guidelines are followed; especially if it seems like a moderator has gone off the rails, it will give your regular members a safe avenue to report it. All of this will lead to the community members trusting that your community spaces are there for you to listen to their feedback, and where they can find others who enjoy your stuff, too.
Whenever I step into new community spaces, I evaluate what guidelines are already in place and look to adjust things as needed. The important thing here is to include the moderators who are already in place - they are often experts of the community and can help make adjustments that they think should happen. If you come in swinging with new standards and didn’t bother telling the volunteer moderators who have been doing it before you, you’re going to have a hard time earning their trust which can seed distrust in the community overall.
And if you get stuck trying to figure out what should be adjusted for your community, you can always ask the whole community to chime in! People love when employees include them in decisions when it comes to their community spaces. Need more help? You can find me on Bluesky for now - I am more than happy to chat with you and offer advice on your guidelines. Now that you know where to start building your community and how to build up expectations for them, next up in this series is building a new server in Discord, a subreddit on Reddit, or creating your own forum!
A community should be a communal effort - if it’s not, isn’t it just authortarian at that point?
-🧜🏻♀️🦄