Here is the Ultimate Community Code of Conduct. I first started drafting this while working with Synereo to get their community guidelines put together. Synereo is working on open, decentralized technology, so in the spirit of this I’ve adapted these guidelines to an open source format. Feel free to use them and change them however you feel.

What’s Wrong With Most Community Guidelines?

Most community guidelines are a litany of “thou shall nots” … a long list of things that people shouldn’t do.

While its nice to know what people aren’t allowed to do, what is missing are actual guiding lines for people to follow.

People a clear expectation of what everyday communication looks like.

They also need to let people know its okay to engage. Ultimately guidelines should empower, they should let you know how to punch the bully in the schoolyard.

Most online bullies take advantage of these gaps to keep the floor. These pull the floor out from under them.

Why Are These Better?

These guidelines are better because they do three things:

• They let people know what not to do.
• They let people know what to do when things go out of hand.
• They give people the chance to build a strong environment that favors the community, not the trolls.

Thank you to all the people who collaborated on these and helped develop them over time.

A shout out to this article, which provided a lot of the basis for my initial exploration of these concepts (I won’t post the name of the article here because of the foul language).