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What should digital community guidelines include?
Write for the people who will use the community: members should be able to understand the rules before they post and find help when something goes wrong. A useful policy covers both positive participation and prohibited behavior, along with the process for reporting and moderation.
- Purpose and scope: Explain what the community is for, where the rules apply, and who is covered.
- Expected conduct: Describe the constructive behavior you want to see, such as respectful discussion and sharing relevant information.
- Prohibited conduct: Name the behaviors that are not allowed and give examples relevant to your community. Avoid relying on vague labels alone.
- Content and interaction: Clarify any rules for posts, comments, messages, images, links, or other ways members interact.
- Reporting and help: Tell members where and how to report a concern, and link to relevant safety and privacy resources.
- Moderation and consequences: Explain how reports are handled, what kinds of action moderators may take, and how members can ask for help or raise concerns about enforcement.
- Review information: Include when the rules were last reviewed or a change log so members can identify updates.
UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms emphasize transparency, accountability, accessible information, and human-rights considerations in platform governance. UNESCO’s official overview says: “Platforms should adhere to international human rights standards, including in platform design, content moderation, and content curation.” This is a governance framework, not a claim that every private community has identical legal duties.
How should rules be written and shared?
Use plain, specific language and organize rules so members can find the part they need. Pair each restriction with enough explanation to make its intended meaning understandable; examples can clarify how a rule applies in the community without trying to list every possible case. Explain what good participation looks like, not just what moderators will remove.
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Make the guidelines accessible where members encounter the community, and link them to relevant help and safety information. The eSafety Commissioner recommends regularly reminding users about community rules through prompts and other in-app content. A rule that exists only in a rarely visited policy page may be easy to miss.
How should moderation and accountability work?
Members need a usable route to report problems and a basic explanation of what follows. State who or what receives reports, what kinds of moderation action may be taken, and how a member can seek assistance or raise a concern about enforcement. Keep the description accurate to your actual process; do not promise response times or outcomes that the community cannot reliably provide.
There is no single appeal procedure established for every online community. Choose a review route that fits the service and explain it clearly, including any limits. UNESCO’s transparency and accountability principles support making moderation policies and processes understandable, but they are not a universal procedural rulebook for every group.
How should guidelines account for safety, rights, and children?
Consider the foreseeable harms in your community and the people most likely to be affected. Rules for a small professional forum may need different examples and reporting routes from those for a public group where children participate. Consider inclusion, accessibility, language, and cultural context when deciding how rules are phrased and applied.
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Communities serving children or likely to include them need particular care around protection from violence, abuse, and exploitation. UNICEF’s 2025 policy brief examines children’s rights in platform regulation and compares approaches across six jurisdictions, using information available as of June 2025. It highlights why child-rights-based approaches need to be locally relevant; it does not establish one universal set of rules for every community.
The law that applies to a particular service—including age-assurance duties, reporting obligations, and enforcement requirements—depends on its jurisdiction, service type, platform, and audience. Separate any legal requirements that apply to your service from the additional standards your community chooses to set.
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When should guidelines be reviewed?
Set a review point and revisit the rules when the community’s risks, features, audience, or operating conditions change. UNESCO identifies risk evaluation as relevant before significant design changes and major policy decisions, as well as during emergencies or material changes in the operating environment. These principles support treating guidelines as a maintained policy rather than a one-time announcement.
For each review, check whether members can still find and understand the rules, whether the safety coverage matches current risks, whether enforcement is transparent and accountable, and whether the language remains accessible and appropriate for the audience and local context.
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What the evidence does—and does not—show
UNESCO reported that more than 10,000 comments from 134 countries informed its 2023 consultation for the platform-governance guidelines. UNICEF’s 2025 brief compares regulatory trends in six jurisdictions, based on information available as of June 2025. These figures describe the scope of consultation and comparison; they are not evidence that a particular community-guideline format reduces harm.
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