Online Community Guidelines
Online community guidelines are policies and best practices for your business’ website. They set the tone for the culture you wish to promote for users. We recommend getting legal advice when creating online community guidelines.
Key points you may consider for your Online Community Guidelines:
Rules for engagement
This outlines the expectations of how users on your site will communicate with each other. This may include guidelines to do with kindness, swearing or offensive comments.
Violations and grievances
This outlines what will happen if a user misbehaves on your site or how to address grievances they may have with other users. We recommend having a plan in place to deal with these issues, specifying the number of violations allowed, whether posts will be deleted, and when and under what circumstances users will be removed from your site.
Ethical/ legal issues
This may include guidelines to do with plagiarism, copyright, and/ or trade mark law, and may be included in your online terms and conditions.
Safety and privacy
This may include outlining rules to do with confidential information and policies relating to the privacy and/ or anonymity of users.
Advertising and spam
This is where you outline whether or not users may advertise products or services on your site, and if so, where/ how they may do this. For example, are users allowed to offer products or services or is this forbidden? Perhaps there is an area on your site specifically designed for this?
See also, Online Terms and Conditions.
