A guideline is a sentence you will still stand behind on a bad Tuesday. A vibe is not a guideline. “Be nice,” “use common sense,” and “don’t be toxic” are vibes. They cannot be enforced twice the same way. Members learn that the real rules live in whoever is on shift.
This is the document plus the ladder. It is how you write the public rules, where you put them, how members report a breach, and what happens in what order when the report is true. It is not how you hire and keep moderators. It is not the toxic-user behaviour playbook — brilliant jerks, brigades, discourage-versus-ban. Those two assume this document exists. The large XenForo queue already walked warning points, soft-delete, and IP tools as buttons. Stay here for the words those buttons implement.
The XenForo community notebook we rely on for this series is sharp on spam hygiene and silent on how to write a rules page. Official XenForo still has warning points, a disciplinary group you strip with Never, and a report queue. Official Discourse still has flags, a review queue, watched words, silence versus suspend, and a public Site Feedback category. Use those as the furniture. Write your sentences. Do not copy a 2018 blog’s point values.
This is not legal advice. When something is actually illegal, a safety threat, or a data incident, you preserve, you escalate to whoever owns legal, and you stop workshopping tone.
What the document is for
The public rules have three jobs. If a paragraph does not do one of them, cut it.
- Tell an honest new member what will get them in trouble. Specific enough that two moderators would make the same call.
- Tell a reporter what is worth reporting. If everything is a rule, nothing is.
- Bind staff. The ladder is part of the document, even if the public version is shorter than the staff version.
A fourth job people sneak in — “sound like a brand” — is how you get 4,000 words nobody reads. Brand lives in the welcome thread and the onboarding copy. Rules live on one page that a moderator can quote in a warning.
Write for the person who will break a rule without meaning to: the wrong room, a hot take, a link they did not know was held. The person who meant to break it will not be talked out of it by a paragraph. They will meet the ladder.
Write rules you will enforce
Every line must pass a staff test: would we act on this if the poster were popular? If the answer is “it depends,” it is not a rule yet. It is a mood. Either make it specific or delete it.
A usable rule has four parts. You do not have to print the four headings; you have to be able to point at them.
| Part | Example that works | Example that does not |
|---|---|---|
| Behaviour | “Do not post a second account to evade a warning or a ban.” | “No drama.” |
| Place | “Trading stays in Trading. Off-site deal chat in other rooms is removed.” | “Keep things appropriate.” |
| Consequence range | “First time: warning. Repeat or evasion: ban of the accounts we can see.” | “Breaking the rules may result in action.” |
| Exception, if any | “News quotes may include a short excerpt. Do not paste the whole piece.” | A hidden “staff discretion” that covers everything |
Prefer verbs over identities. “Do not harass” needs a definition (repeated contact after a stop, targeted insults, dogpiling a named person). “Do not be a troll” is an identity argument you will lose in public.
Prefer examples over slogans. One good example is worth a paragraph of values:
- Allowed: “This patch made the tank unplayable; here is the log.”
- Not allowed: “Anyone who main-tanks is an idiot” plus a quote of their post from three years ago.
If you run a support board, say whether you allow “I cancelled, you suck.” If you run a political room, say whether you allow partisan campaigning. If you run a kids-adjacent game, say the age line and who is responsible for it. Vague “family friendly” is how you get a fight about a screenshot.
Do not publish a rule you do not have a tool or a human for. “No spoilers” without a spoiler tag and a prefix is a hope. “No doxxing” without a staff path to hide and escalate is a hope. Hopes do not belong on the rules page.
Three community types, three hard-line packs
The skeleton above stays. The hard-lines section changes with the product. Write only the lines you will enforce.
Product support. Hard lines: malware, credential-stealing “fixes,” doxxing a customer or an employee, payment-fraud bragging. Conduct: “your support is trash” is usually allowed; “I will find you” is not. Self-promo: competitors may answer a how-to; they may not paste a signup coupon in every thread. Alts: one account unless they declared a second for a vendor/customer split.
Gaming / roleplay. Hard lines: real-world threats, doxxing, sexual content involving minors (including “it’s just lore”), stolen-account trading. Conduct: in-character insult is not a free pass for out-of-character harassment — say which side of the slash the rule applies to. Trading: if items or money change hands, the trading room is the only legal place and the scam line is a hard line. Spoilers: a prefix plus a time window, or do not write the rule.
News / magazine. Hard lines: copyright pastes of the whole piece, threats to a named journalist, fabricated “documents.” Conduct: partisan disagreement is the product; brigading a reporter’s personal life is not. Self-promo: authors may link their own work in the discussion room under a rule you can quote; they may not turn Announcements into a wire.
If a line is not in your pack, it is not a rule. A gaming board that copies a newsroom copyright paragraph it will never apply has already taught members that the page is decorative.
A structure that fits on one screen
Members will not read a constitution. Staff will not apply a constitution at 23:00. Aim for a page that a phone can show without a table of contents.
Suggested public skeleton. Steal the headings, not the tone.
- What this place is. One or two sentences. “A forum for people who run X. Not a marketplace, not a dating board, not customer support for Company Y unless we say so.”
- How to post. Right room, required prefixes or tags, search before you open a duplicate, language of the board.
- Hard lines. The things that skip the gentle rungs: illegal content, sexual content involving minors, threats, doxxing, malware, payment fraud. One short list. No jokes in this section.
- Conduct. Harassment, slurs, brigades, bad-faith pile-ons, staff-baiting. Define the words.
- Self-promotion and links. What is allowed, where, and the new-account hold (“new accounts cannot post external links until they are Established / past TL0”).
- Avatars, names, signatures. Impersonation, pornographic avatars, slurs in the name. These are not “style notes.” They are how people get attacked in the member list.
- Alts. Whether they are allowed, whether they must be declared, what evasion does.
- What we do. The public ladder in five lines. How to report. That staff may act on a pattern, not only on one post.
- How to complain about us. A pointer to Site Feedback, a meta forum, or a ticket. If there is no in-bounds way to criticise staff, criticism will go out of bounds.
That is enough. Legal terms of service, privacy, and copyright process can link out. Do not paste them into the conduct page.
The staff version is allowed to be longer
Public: what members must know. Staff: how you decide, who escalates, what you log.
Put the staff version in a private node (XenForo official pattern: Private node, then View node = Yes for Administrative and Moderating) or in an internal Discourse category. Include:
- When to use a public reply versus a warning versus a quiet removal.
- When two moderators must agree (bans over a duration you choose; anything involving a staff member as the target).
- What you never do in-thread (mock the poster, argue the warning, pile on).
- How you handle a report about a moderator.
The team article owns rotas and burnout. The staff rules page owns decision hygiene so two shifts do not invent two constitutions.
Where to publish it (so it is findable)
A rules thread from 2019, locked, on page six of General, is not published. Neither is a footer link nobody opens until they are already angry.
XenForo
- A page node is the official shape for static HTML that belongs in the tree. Rules, a short handbook. Template syntax is allowed. This is better than a “Rules forum” that then collects replies.
- If you already have a living rules thread that people quote, keep it as a link forum to the page, or make the thread the canonical URL and lock it. Two documents will diverge. Pick one.
- A notice (
Communication → Notices) can point at the page for new sessions or for guests. Notices are for “read this once,” not for the full text. - Registration: if you use an agreement checkbox, the text there should be the same document or a short summary that links to it. A third version in the register form is how you get “I never agreed to that.”
- Node descriptions can repeat the room rule (“Trading only — read the trading line on the rules page”). They should not invent extra law.
The knowledge-base article owns longer handbooks. The taxonomy article owns whether rules are a page or a forum. Here: one canonical URL, linked from register, from the footer or help nav, and from every warning template.
Discourse
- A topic in Site Feedback or a dedicated FAQ category, pinned, or a documentation topic if you use that pattern. Keep Site Feedback public — Meta’s own practice, and a place the rules can be argued as a change request instead of as a fight in the condemned thread.
- Category descriptions hold the extra local rule (“Support requires a version tag”).
- Watched words are not the rules page. They are enforcement furniture (standard admin UI actions: block, censor, flag, replace). Put the policy on the page; put the string list in watched words.
Either. Put the URL in warning templates and in the report acknowledgement. If staff cannot paste the link from memory, it is too long or too hidden.
The enforcement ladder
The ladder is the document in motion. Write it down. Use it even when you are angry. The toxic-user playbook owns special shapes (brilliant jerk, brigade). This ladder is the default for ordinary breaches.
| Rung | When | What the member sees | What you log |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0. Edit or move | Wrong room, missing prefix, fixable format | A move note or a quiet edit if your culture allows it | “Moved, no warning” |
| 1. Public or PM course-correct | First, mild, likely accidental | A human sentence from a personal staff account: what was wrong, link to the rule | Optional. If you skip the log, you cannot prove it was the first time |
| 2. Formal warning | Repeat, or first time on a written hard-ish line | Official warning. XenForo warning points if you use them. Discourse official warning / PM | Always |
| 3. Restrict | Pattern continues; you still want them in the room | Lose a verb: replies only, no links, no conversations, a temporary group, Discourse silence | Always. Say when it lifts |
| 4. Remove | Hard line, evasion, or restrict failed | Suspend / ban. Soft-delete the content that should not stay | Always. What, when, which accounts |
Skip rungs upward for hard lines (section 3 of the public page). Do not skip downward for friends. The loyalty article already said it: skipping the ladder for friends is how loyalty dies in public.
Do not invent point values here. Official XenForo lets warning points feed a group that you strip with Never. That is a real mechanism. The numbers are yours. Write them on the staff page. If you do not want points, use warnings as a dated log and apply the restrict group by hand. Points without a group that does something are a scoreboard.
A workable XenForo wiring, still without magic numbers:
- Create the warning definitions you will actually select — names that match the public headings (Harassment, Wrong room, Link hold, Alt evasion), not internal jokes.
- Create a Restricted (or Warned) secondary group. On that group, Never the verbs you are taking away (Start conversations, post links, post if you mean a full mute). Never is correct here. It is a discipline group.
- If you use points, point the warning system at that group at a threshold you wrote down. If you do not use points, a moderator adds the group by hand when rung 3 fires and removes it when the date hits.
- Test with a throwaway account. Analyze permissions. Confirm Registered-only still posts. Confirm Restricted cannot do the verb. Confirm a staff secondary group still works.
Discourse wiring is shorter because silence and suspend already are rungs 3 and 4. Create the warning PM template. Put watched-word block only on strings that should never appear (the hard-line list). Use flag or censor when a human should still see it. Do not block words that are also how people report the problem.
What each rung is not
- Rung 0 is not a warning. If you treat every move as a strike, people will stop posting in the wrong room by stopping posting.
- Rung 1 is not a dunk. The Admin-is-not-a-person rule applies. Course-correct as a human. If you need the nuclear badge, you are already on rung 2.
- Rung 3 is not a shadowban you pretend is a glitch. If they cannot post links, say so. Hidden punishments train conspiracy, not compliance.
- Rung 4 is not a debate. The decision can be reviewed in Staff. The thread is not a courtroom. The toxic-user article owns the courtroom temptation.
Official XenForo extras that sit beside the ladder, not on it: soft-delete versus hard-delete (prefer soft until you have a legal reason), IP discourage versus IP ban (discourage is the smaller tool), security lock (that is a compromised-account tool, not a punishment). Do not use a security lock as rung 4. It teaches the wrong lesson and it is the wrong tool.
Official Discourse extras: flags feed the review queue. Enough distinct TL3 flags on a new account can auto-silence in the stock product. Silence is rung 3. Suspend is rung 4. Watched words can auto-flag or block a string; they do not replace a human on anything that requires judgement.
Reports: make the honest path the easy path
A rule nobody can report is a decoration. A report queue nobody works is a decoration that makes people angry twice.
What members need
- A report / flag control on the post, not a requirement to start a new thread named “REPORT.”
- A one-line “what happened” so they do not have to write an essay.
- A signal that a human saw it. Stock software often does this poorly. A short canned reply or a staff habit (“we got this”) is operational practice.
What staff need
- One queue. XenForo reports. Discourse review. If you also take reports in Discord, you now have two queues. Pick a canonical one or you will miss a hard line.
- A log that survives the post being deleted. Warning records, a staff thread, Moderator Panel by Andrew if you use that add-on to track reports. The notebook names that add-on; it is not required.
- A way to mark no action so the next shift does not re-litigate a “this was allowed.”
What you tell reporters
- You may not hear the outcome. Especially not if the outcome is a warning to someone else.
- Duplicate reports on the same post are fine; brigading a person with reports is not (that is a conduct rule).
- False reports as a weapon are themselves a breach.
Do not require reporters to reply in the condemned thread. That is how you get a pile-on. The report is the in-bounds path. Site Feedback is the in-bounds path for “your rule is wrong.” DMs to a founder are how you get a second secret court.
Warning templates (so the ladder sounds like one person)
Write three templates. Keep them short. Fill the brackets. Do not let every moderator invent a voice.
Course-correct (rung 1)
“Hey — this belongs in [room] / needs the [prefix]. I moved it. The rule is here: [URL]. Shout if I got the room wrong.”
Formal warning (rung 2)
“This post breaks [rule name]: [one-line quote or description]. That is a warning. Please read [URL]. Further breaks can mean [restrict / ban]. If you think we have this wrong, use [Site Feedback / ticket], not this thread.”
Restrict (rung 3)
“Because of [pattern + dates], your account cannot [verb] until [date]. The rule is [URL]. This lifts automatically if nothing else happens. Questions: [staff ticket], not a public thread.”
Send official warnings from a staff identity the queue can search. Send rung 1 from a personal account when you can. The split is the loyalty article; the templates are this one.
If your culture is more formal, make rung 1 formal too. Do not make rung 1 a joke and rung 2 a statute. The jump will feel like a trap.
Special pages people forget to align
The rules page is not the only law members meet.
| Surface | Must agree with the rules page | Common failure |
|---|---|---|
| Register agreement | Same document or a short summary plus link | A lawyer TOS that bans things you allow in practice |
| Node / category descriptions | Local extra only (“required prefix”) | A second harassment policy in Trading |
| Warning titles in ACP | Names that match the public headings | Internal jokes as the official warning name |
| Notices | Temporary (“spoiler week,” “election night”) | A notice that quietly rewrites a rule |
| Discord / chat | “Chat follows the same hard lines; room rules may be looser” | A Discord that is the dump for what you banned on the forum |
If chat is actually a different culture, say so. The forum vs Discord article owns the product split. Here: hard lines travel. Conduct flavour can be looser in a voice channel if you wrote that down. If you did not write it down, staff will import the strictest reading and members will import the loosest.
What you do not put in this document
Leave these to the siblings so the rules page stays short:
- How you recruit, train, and unstaff moderators — team.
- How you handle a brilliant jerk, a brigade, or a famous toxic regular — toxic users.
- How the XenForo approval queue, IP tools, and node moderators are wired — large board shift.
- How Discourse TL flags and the review queue are tuned — TL article.
- How you name rooms so the “wrong room” rule is even possible — taxonomy.
The rules page may link those operational pieces on the staff version. The public version should still fit on a phone.
A writing process that does not take a quarter
Operational practice:
- Dump every “we always say…” into a staff thread. You already have rules. They are just oral.
- Cut anything you did not enforce in the last six months. Oral rules you ignore are how members claim selective enforcement — and they are right.
- Write the hard lines first. Get a second human to read only that list.
- Write conduct with two examples each. If you cannot find two examples, you cannot enforce it.
- Write the public ladder in five lines. Then write the staff version with the missing rungs.
- Publish on one URL. Point register, notices, warning templates, and the help nav at it.
- Review after the first fight. The first real incident will show the sentence that was vague. Fix the sentence. Do not add a paragraph.
Review the public page on a calendar — twice a year is enough for most boards — and whenever you add a verb (trading, dating, marketplace, NSFW). A stale page is still better than an oral tradition, until it bans something you now feature.
After the first real incident
The first fight will not match the examples you wrote. That is expected. Do this, in order, before you add a paragraph:
- Act on the ladder you already published. If the conduct was a hard line, skip up. If it was not, do not invent a new hard line in the thread.
- In Staff, write one sentence: what happened, which public heading it sat under, which rung you used.
- If the heading was wrong — the behaviour was real but the page did not name it — add one sentence and one example to that heading. Do not add a new heading for a single incident.
- If two moderators disagreed, the staff version is the document that failed. Fix the decision note (when two people must agree; what “pattern” means). Do not settle it by founder DM.
- Tell the room only what the public page already allows you to say. A patch note on the rules page is enough. A manifesto is how you start a second fight.
A rules page that grows by a heading per drama is how you get the constitution nobody reads. Growth should be rare, local, and dated.
Checklist
Document
- One canonical public URL.
- What this place is, in two sentences.
- Hard lines that skip the gentle rungs.
- Conduct rules with verbs and examples, not vibes.
- Link / self-promo / alt / name rules.
- Public ladder in five lines and a report path.
- An in-bounds way to criticise staff (Site Feedback, meta, ticket).
- Staff version in a private room: logging, dual-control, no dunking.
Enforcement
- Warning templates that quote the same headings.
- XenForo warnings (and a discipline group if you use points) or Discourse warnings / silence — configured, not theoretical.
- One report queue that someone actually opens.
- Register / notices / node blurbs do not contradict the page.
- Friends do not skip rungs. Hard lines do.
Takeaways
- If two moderators would not make the same call, you wrote a vibe. Write a behaviour, a place, a consequence range.
- Publish one page. A page node or a pinned topic beats a 2019 thread and a lawyer TOS that disagree.
- The ladder is the document in motion: move → human course-correct → formal warning → restrict a verb → remove. Skip up for hard lines. Never skip down for regulars.
- Reports need one queue, a log that survives deletion, and no requirement to fight in the condemned thread.
- Hiring and toxic-user tactics are other articles. This one is the text you quote when you act.
When the next bad Tuesday arrives, you should be able to paste a link, name a rung, and go back to the rest of the queue. That is what the document is for.