Community guidelines: examples, a template, and how to enforce them
Community guidelines are the written rules for how members behave in an online community: what to post and where, how to treat each other, what's off limits, and what happens when someone breaks a rule. Good ones are short and specific, and they're enforced the same way for every member, so people know where the line is before they cross it.
This guide gives you community guidelines examples from seven real brand communities, a full template you can copy, and a way to write rules that a human moderator and an AI moderator would apply the same way. That last part matters more every year. More communities run an automated first pass on every post now, and a rule like “be respectful” gives a machine very little to work with. It doesn't give a new moderator much either.
Why community guidelines are important
Guidelines do most of their work before anything goes wrong. New members read them to find out what kind of place they've joined. Is this a support forum where you search before you ask, or a space where people post half-finished work and want blunt critique? Veteran members use them to settle small disputes without calling in staff. When a moderator removes a post, the guidelines make the call look fair rather than personal. That's how clear guidelines build trust: when people can predict what happens next, members engage more freely.
Brand communities have a second reason. Most are public and indexed by search engines, and Webflow says exactly that on its own guidelines page. What members post sits next to your brand in Google and in AI answers. Clear community rules on spam, privacy and accuracy protect your members first and your reputation right after. They also help members feel safe asking a basic question, and a community that's a safe space for basic questions is where most knowledge sharing starts.
What effective community guidelines include
Length varies a lot. FlutterFlow's guidelines fit on one screen, while HubSpot's run to several sections. The coverage is consistent, though, and most effective community guidelines cover these eight areas.
Purpose: what the community is for and who it serves
Open with one or two sentences on why the community exists. “This is where Acme customers get answers from each other and from our team” tells members what's on topic before you've written a single rule, and it gives moderators a test for the gray areas. Potential members often read the guidelines before they join a private community, so the purpose line is also your pitch. If you haven't settled it yet, start with how to build a community.
Expected behavior: encourage constructive feedback
Say what you want to see, concretely. Webflow asks members to critique work and ideas, never people, and to make feedback actionable. Atlassian asks members to assume positive intent, search before asking and mark the answers that helped them. Use this section to encourage members to share knowledge, answer questions and give constructive feedback. Rules like these encourage collaboration because they describe the habits of your best members, and they give positive contributions as much room as the prohibitions.
Content rules: what belongs where
Tell members where things go: support questions in Q&A, bug reports and feature ideas in their designated areas, introductions in a welcome post. Then add the housekeeping that keeps discussions in a community forum readable: search first, one topic per post, no cross-posting the same question in three spaces, and a descriptive title.
Harassment, hate speech and illegal content
Take a strong stance here and name your zero tolerance policy. List what gets someone removed without a warning: threats, hate speech or harassment aimed at someone's identity, sharing personal information to target someone, illegal content and sexual content. This is the one section where vague wording does real damage to members, so be blunt about harmful content.
Privacy and personal information
Ban posting personal information, whether it's yours or someone else's: email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and anything shared in a private message. B2B communities need one more line. Members paste screenshots, and screenshots carry customer records, account IDs, API keys and other personal details. Ask people to blur them.
Self-promotion, links and selling
Most guidelines get vague here, and most moderation arguments start here. Decide where members can share their own work, whether affiliate and referral links are allowed, and how vendors and partners should behave. Atlassian's partner rule is a good model: partners answer the question asked and may link to their partner page, not to their own site.
AI-generated content
This section barely existed a few years ago. HubSpot asks members to disclose when a post was written with AI help and to check it for accuracy. Atlassian lets members use AI for language and formatting but expects the substance to be their own. Pick a position and write it down, because your moderators will meet the question this week either way.
Enforcement, reporting and appeals
Close with what happens when someone breaks a rule, the reporting mechanisms members can use, and how to appeal a decision. Members understand the stakes when the consequences are written down, and they accept a removal far more readily when it matches what the page said would happen.
Community guidelines examples from 7 brand communities
Every page below was live and public when I checked it on October 13, 2026. Four are Bettermode customers and three come from some of the best-known software communities around. For each of these real-world examples you get a link and the move worth copying.
Webflow: short rules up top, the full code of conduct below
Webflow's community guidelines open with three one-line rules, then expand into a longer Community Code of Conduct. One rule, “Flag, don't fight,” tells members to report bad behavior rather than engage with it. Further down is a plain list of the behaviors that lead to removal, warnings or suspension, from spam and discrimination to impersonation and excessive cross-posting. Copy the layers: members who only read the top get the gist, and moderators get a list they can point to.
Yoto Space: definitions for the words everyone else leaves vague
Yoto Space's house rules ask members to keep the community a safe space, then define their terms. Promotion means affiliate links or referral codes for Yoto or other stockists. Campaigning means posting repeatedly to push a cause. Spam covers anything posted repeatedly, very low quality or off topic. Because the members are parents, the privacy rule asks people to be thoughtful about photos of their children. The page ends with what moderators may do: remove or edit posts, suspend members and pre-moderate spaces.
Atlassian Community: rules with numbers in them
Atlassian's rules of engagement are the most specific on this list. Necroposting means replying to a thread six months old or more. Posts written to sell something or push people to a form get removed. Criticizing Atlassian products is fine; criticizing people never is. The necroposting rule is my favorite here, partly for the word and mostly because it comes with a number a moderator can check.
HubSpot Community: house rules plus a rule for AI-written posts
HubSpot's community guidelines are six house rules, then interaction guidelines that also cover in-person events, then a code of conduct. Two rules are worth stealing. Each account has to represent one individual person, so no shared or company logins. And moderators can remove incorrect content whether a human or an AI wrote it, with members asked to disclose AI help. Every post carries a Report Inappropriate Content option.
Lenovo Legion: guidelines inside onboarding
The Legion Gaming Community puts its guidelines on the Getting Started page, next to the onboarding checklist that walks new members through their profile, first like and first post. “No gaming the system” covers abuse of the rewards program (worth having if you run gamification), and “Lost in translation?” asks members to keep cultural differences in mind in a global community.
Figma Forum: rules for posting as well as behavior
The Figma Forum guidelines are a great example of two layers. The basics cover conduct: be kind, keep the forum organized, no spam, no private information. A second section tells members where each kind of post goes: bugs to Report a Problem, usage questions to Ask the Community, feature ideas to Suggest a Feature. Copy the routing, because a surprising share of moderation work is moving posts to the right place.
FlutterFlow: four rules on one screen
FlutterFlow's guidelines have four rules: stay on topic, search first, be helpful and respectful, and no spam or excessive self-promotion. The helpfulness rule is the clever one. It asks members to request more detail on an unclear question rather than dismiss it, which keeps a technical Q&A community friendly to beginners. A link to the guidelines sits in the community's navigation, so nobody has to hunt for it.
A community guidelines template you can copy
Here's a full template built from the real-world examples above. Replace the bracketed parts, delete any section that doesn't apply, and keep the examples: they're the part members and moderators actually use.
Two sections need the most editing: the purpose line and the promotion rules, because that's where similar communities still differ most. A private community for paying customers can welcome more product talk than a public forum, and a developer community usually wants code samples and little else. Ask a few veteran members to read the draft and seek feedback on anything unclear before it goes live. If you create guidelines for a brand-new community, start shorter and add rules as real cases come up.
How to write community rules that get applied the same way every time
Two moderators reading the same rule should make the same call on the same post. So should an AI moderator. When they don't agree, fix the rule before you retrain anyone. Writing guidelines with these best practices takes a little longer up front and saves you every argument later.
Describe behavior instead of values
Everyone agrees with respect in principle. The trouble is applying it. “Be respectful” is a value, while “critique the work, not the person” is a behavior a moderator can check a post against. Focus each rule on something a moderator can see in a post. My rule of thumb: if your guidelines open with a sentence about valuing respect, inclusion and community, cut it. Nobody has ever rewritten a post because of a value statement.
Show an allowed and a not-allowed example
An example does more than a paragraph of explanation. Pick a real post that sits just inside the line and one just outside it, and put both under the rule. For an AI moderator this is the single most useful change you can make, because it shows where your line is instead of leaving the model to guess.
Define the fuzzy words
Spam, promotion, off topic and harassment mean different things in different communities. Yoto Space defines promotion and campaigning, and Atlassian puts a number on necroposting. Do the same for every word your moderators have argued about in your own community, and put the definition inside the rule.
Say what happens next
Every rule should point to a consequence, even if most rules share one ladder. Clear rules with predictable outcomes make members feel they're being treated fairly, which matters most when the member breaking a rule is a popular one.
Test the rules on last month's posts
Before you publish, pull 30 recent posts, including a few you removed and a few you hesitated over. Have two community managers label each one against the draft rules, separately. Every disagreement points at a rule that needs an example or a definition. Fix those and run it again. It takes an afternoon, and nothing else trains a moderation team as fast.
How to enforce community guidelines
Brands enforce community guidelines with a ladder that gets stricter with each violation: a hold or a note on the post, removal, a written warning, a temporary suspension, then a ban. Serious violations skip the ladder. Every action names the rule it's based on, and members can appeal to someone who didn't make the original call. The full workflow and best practices are in our guide to community moderation.
Holds and pre-moderation
A hold keeps a post out of public view until someone reviews it. It's the right first response when you're unsure, and it's how many community managers treat new accounts: approval for the first few posts, or a hold on anything containing a blocked keyword. Yoto Space keeps the option to pre-moderate whole spaces, which helps during a launch or a heated week.
Removals and warnings
When a post clearly breaks a rule, remove it and tell the member which rule it broke. A first offence usually ends there. A second earns a written warning that spells out what comes next. Keep a record, because the third conversation goes better when you can show the first two.
Suspensions and bans
A temporary suspension, often a few days without posting, is the step before a ban and gives someone room to cool off. Permanent bans are for repeat violations and anything on your zero tolerance list. Webflow's guidelines reserve the right to suspend accounts without prior notice, wording worth copying for the serious cases.
Appeals
Give members one place to appeal, a deadline and a promise of a response, and have a different moderator review each one. When an appeal succeeds, restore the post and say so. When the same kind of appeal keeps succeeding, your community managers need new rules or a clearer example.
Enforcement tools on your community platform
Your community platform should carry the routine load. On Bettermode that means a keyword blocklist that flags posts containing words you define, a built-in profanity filter, a minimum account age before someone can post or reply, and a moderation panel where your team can allow, edit or reject posts. Reported posts land in the same panel.
Enforcing your guidelines with Toggy Moderate
Keyword filters catch words, and most moderation calls turn on context. A link to a competitor's docs is helpful in a thread where someone asked for alternatives, and it's promotion when it's dropped into an unrelated question. That gap is why Toggy Moderate exists.
Toggy Moderate is the moderation agent in Toggy, the team of AI agents for Bettermode communities. It checks every post and comment against baseline safety, your own rules and the conversation around it. Every decision comes with reasoning your team can read, and one click overturns any call. Over time it learns the norms your community already enforces. Guidelines written the way this post describes, with behaviors, examples and consequences, give it a clear line to apply and make its reasoning easy for your team to check.
Toggy runs on Bettermode communities for now. The demo connects it in simulation mode, which reads and never posts, so you can watch what it would do with your actual posts before it does anything.
Community guidelines vs code of conduct vs terms of service
These three documents get mixed up, and many brands publish all three. Community guidelines are the practical rules for one community. A code of conduct sets behavior standards across every space a company runs, often including events. Terms of service are the legal agreement.
Figma shows the split well: its forum rules ask members to follow the separate Figma Code of Conduct too. HubSpot folds its conduct rules into the same page as its house rules. Either works, as long as each document links to the others. For the legal layer, see legal considerations for community forums.
Make your guidelines easy to find and keep them current
Community members won't go looking for the rules, so put them where new members already are. Link them in the welcome message and on the onboarding page, as Lenovo Legion does, and in the navigation, as FlutterFlow does. Pin a short version in each space and link the full page from the report dialog. New members feel confident posting sooner when the rules are one click away. Encourage members to report problems instead of replying to them, and when a moderator acts on a post, link the exact rule in the note.
Review the guidelines whenever the community grows into something new: a new space type, a rewards program, a partner program, a wave of AI-written posts. Put a “last updated” date at the top, as Atlassian does, and announce changes in a post instead of editing quietly.
FAQ
What are community guidelines?
Community guidelines, sometimes called community rules, are the written standards for an online community. They explain what the community is for, how members should treat each other, what content belongs where, what's off limits and what happens when someone breaks a rule. The best ones are short, written in plain language, give an example for each rule, and are enforced the same way for every member, including veterans and staff.
What should community guidelines include?
Cover the community's purpose, expected behavior, content rules (what goes where), harassment and hate speech, privacy and personal information, self-promotion and links, and enforcement with a way to report and appeal. Many brand communities now add a rule on AI-generated posts too. HubSpot asks members to disclose AI help, and Atlassian allows AI for language and formatting as long as the substance is the member's own.
How do brands enforce community guidelines?
Most brands use a ladder: a hold or a note for a first minor violation, then removal with a written warning, a temporary suspension and finally a ban. Threats, hate speech and illegal content skip straight to removal and a ban. Every action should name the rule it's based on, and community members should be able to report posts and appeal decisions. More teams now run an AI first pass, with people able to overturn any call.
What's the difference between community guidelines and a code of conduct?
Community guidelines are the practical rules for one community: what to post, where it goes, how to treat other members and what moderators will do. A code of conduct is usually broader and covers behavior across all of a company's community spaces, including events and meetups. Many brands publish both. Figma's forum guidelines, for example, ask members to follow the separate Figma Code of Conduct as well.
How long should community guidelines be?
Long enough to give every rule an example and a consequence, and short enough that a new member can read them in a few minutes. FlutterFlow's fit on one screen with four rules. Webflow puts three one-line rules at the top and a longer code of conduct below them. If yours run long, lead with a short summary and link to the detail.
How do I set up community guidelines and moderation for a brand community?
Start with a one-line purpose, then write rules for behavior, content, privacy, promotion and AI posts, each with an allowed example, a not-allowed example and a stated consequence. Publish them where new members land: the welcome message, the onboarding page and the navigation. Then set up moderation on your platform: keyword and profanity filters, a minimum account age for posting, a review queue, a report button and an appeal address. Test the rules on last month's posts first.
Can an AI moderator enforce community guidelines?
Yes, if the guidelines are specific. An AI moderator applies the rules you give it, so “be respectful” gives it little to work with, while “critique the work, not the person” plus an example gives it a clear line. Toggy Moderate, built for Bettermode communities, checks every post and comment against your rules and the surrounding conversation, explains each decision, and lets your team overturn any call in one click.
TL;DR
- Community guidelines (or community rules) set the standard for behavior and content in an online community, plus what happens when someone breaks them.
- Cover purpose, expected behavior, content, harassment and hate speech, privacy, promotion, AI-generated posts, and enforcement with reporting and appeals.
- Give every rule an allowed example, a not-allowed example and a consequence, so people and AI moderators apply it the same way.
- Copy what works: Webflow's suspension list, Yoto Space's definitions, Atlassian's numbers, HubSpot's AI rule, Lenovo Legion's placement in onboarding, Figma's posting routes and FlutterFlow's brevity.
- Enforce with a ladder (hold, removal, warning, suspension, ban), skip it for zero tolerance violations, and always allow an appeal.
- Toggy Moderate checks every post in a Bettermode community against your rules and explains each call, and simulation mode shows what it would hold back before it acts.
