Be Flexible Not Arbitrary

Any online space worth engaging with has some sort of established list of rules or expectations posted for prospective and current members to view. Very often, rules pages are one of the first things setup in a space. This makes a lot of sense, as for a place to grow and blossom in any sort of orderly way, the fledgling community will need to have trust that the space is being governed effectively and with the community in mind.

A rules page is just one part of a broader moderative strategy, however, and cannot be the end-all-be-all of setting expectations and enforcing standards and cultural norms. And to that end, a rules list should be focused on establishing clear expectations in conjunction with an effective moderation strategy that relies on trust, flexibility, and the ability to interpret those rules contextually to maintain a positive community culture.

To understand how rules can be a good tool for flexible moderation, it’s important to avoid the common pitfall that many teams fall into: itemized rules lists. These rules can come in many forms, but at their core they are an attempt to list out all of the specific forbidden behaviors, one by one, in depth, as an attempt to pre-justify interventions (including referring to specific rules, subsections, etc. during and intervention).

There are some significant issues with this approach, to say the least. Namely, not only do itemized rules create a significant amount of complexity and administrivia for both community members and the staff team, in part defeating their purpose, they also open the cultural door for the dread of many a mod team: rules lawyering.

Rules lawyering, also known as moderative litigation, is an attempt by a user engaged in problematic behavior to carve exceptions or rule changes that benefit themselves by exhaustingly litigating the specific wording or intention behind one or more rules. This often comes during or directly after a moderative action targeting the offending user, and typically involves attempts to discredit the intervention, rule(s) referenced, and even the authority of the moderator themselves.

If allowed to play out, this arguing of technicalities and constructing of loopholes not only creates a dramatic situation (to the benefit of the offending user, who is often seeking to delegitimize through drama), but also requires a great deal of energy and currency from the staff team to resolve. In the end, it results in a very expensive situation that places the team’s position, at best, back where it started.

How do you effectively combat this, as both an individual moderator and a cohesive team? The answer is preparing the space structurally and culturally to minimize the influence of rules lawyers and maximize the capability of moderators to effectively shut down bad faith litigation. Structurally, that comes from having broad guidelines which establish the expectations for behavior and give the team room to interpret rules as needed, case-by-case. This is combined with fostering an internal mission-driven culture focused around community membership and building trust, which creates a strong mandate for moderators to do what is necessary to defend cultural norms and community health.

From the structural perspective, one method I’ve had a great amount of personal success with is the Objective-Guideline method of rules writing. A future article will dive more in depth into this, but in short the idea is to establish broad expectations through Objectives (such as: “Members can expect their time and energy to be respected and for their contributions not to be disrupted by irrelevant or inappropriate material.”) The number of Objectives should be relatively low, and focus on establishing very broad standards for behavior.

Following up on that, more specific instructions can be provided to clarify or build upon the Objectives in the form of Guidelines. These start with a statement of intent (“To support/maintain/encourage X, members are expected to…”), and then establish more explicit policy expectations or regulated behavior regarding a critical aspect for that specific community—such as clarifying an “original works” policy in a creative community. This may also involve regulating or forbidding things not appropriate for the space or community (ie: NSFW content or political soapboxing). As an example, a Guideline building on the above Objective by regulating commercial activity in an art-focused space might read: “To avoid commercial disputes and marketing that might adversely impact the community, members are expected to keep all negotiations related to commissions and other commercial transactions off of the server.”

The key to this method is that you are never itemizing every single disallowed behavior and are separating enforcement from some specific wording or list. Even when focusing a Guideline down on specific behaviors, room is still being left for interpretation and the focus remains on establishing expectations, not trying to preempt specific actions. In doing so, you establish a rules structure that lends itself to a more flexible system.

Flexibility, however, ultimately comes from how you approach things. The way your rules page is organized means very little if your team is too afraid to act contextually. This is where fostering an internal culture of adaptation becomes so important.