Every community eventually has that one member. Your guidelines are what give you the authority to deal with them properly. Generate comprehensive community rules in 60 seconds.
Good communities don't happen by accident. They happen because someone wrote the rules down.
The communities that don't have clear guidelines spend half their time arguing about whether something was actually against the rules. Yours won't. Every enforcement decision starts from the same documented foundation everyone agreed to.
Volunteer mods and paid staff both need documented policies to act from. Without written guidelines, every ban becomes a debate and every debate becomes a headache. Give your team something to stand behind.
Discord, Reddit, Facebook, and most major platforms require communities to have their own guidelines in addition to the platform's rules. Especially if you're over 1,000 members. This generator gets you there in under a minute.
One is a contract. The other is a culture document. Both matter, and neither replaces the other.
A Terms of Service is a legal agreement. It establishes the user relationship, covers liability, governs disputes, and protects the platform operator in court. It's written for lawyers as much as for users. Community guidelines are something different. They're written for the actual humans in your community, explaining how people are expected to treat each other and what happens when they don't. Both documents are necessary, and neither one replaces the other.
The things that make online communities fall apart have almost nothing to do with legal clauses. Harassment drives people out. Relentless off-topic promotion poisons the signal-to-noise ratio. Impersonation creates trust collapse. Bad actors testing the limits of undefined rules exploit every gap they find. None of these are topics that a standard ToS handles well. Community guidelines exist precisely to address this layer of human behavior that legal documents aren't designed for.
Reddit's community guidelines are a well-known example of how this works at scale. Each subreddit has its own rules on top of Reddit's site-wide policies. Those subreddit-specific rules are community guidelines. They exist because "don't violate the site terms" is not nearly enough guidance for moderating a community with thousands of daily posts. The subreddit's guidelines define what's on-topic, how to title posts, what counts as a personal attack, whether memes are allowed, and a dozen other specifics that only make sense in that particular community's context.
Discord takes this a step further. Partners and verified servers are required to have written community guidelines posted in a dedicated channel. They're reviewed as part of the verification process. A Discord server with 50,000 members and no written rules is not something Discord will verify or feature, regardless of how good the content is. The written guidelines are a signal of operational maturity, not just a legal formality.
The edge cases are where good community guidelines really earn their keep. What happens when a member posts something that isn't explicitly against the rules but is clearly disruptive? What do you do with someone who is technically following the letter of every rule while obviously acting in bad faith? Well-written guidelines include language about the spirit of the community and give moderators discretionary authority grounded in the documented purpose of the space. Without that, every moderator decision in gray areas gets relitigated endlessly by the person who got moderated.
Burnout among community moderators is a real and well-documented problem. A large part of it comes from having to make judgment calls without clear policy backing, then dealing with the fallout from those decisions in the absence of a written standard everyone agreed to. Clear guidelines don't eliminate hard calls, but they dramatically reduce the amount of second-guessing, appeals, and drama that follows any enforcement action.
The single most common reason thriving communities fall apart. Your guidelines need a specific, detailed harassment policy with clear examples of what counts and what doesn't.
Self-promotion in communities is a never-ending tension. Guidelines that define exactly what's allowed and what isn't save you from having to arbitrate the same argument every week.
Someone pretending to be a mod, a public figure, or another member creates immediate trust damage. Make it an explicit violation with immediate consequences spelled out in writing.
Every section your community rules document actually needs to function as a real moderation framework.
What your community is about, who it's for, and why these rules exist. Sets tone and establishes the community's purpose before diving into the rules themselves.
What types of content are welcome, what's off-topic, formatting expectations, and what kinds of posts require specific labels or flairs. The day-to-day content standards.
A specific, enumerated list of behaviors that are not allowed. Harassment, threats, doxxing, impersonation, ban evasion, and anything else your community specifically needs to address.
What counts as harassment in your community, how to report it, and what happens to someone who engages in it. Should address both public and private channel behavior.
Limits on self-promotion, repetitive posting, unsolicited DMs, and advertising. If your community has specific rules about sharing links or mentioning other products, this is where they go.
Prohibition on pretending to be moderators, staff, public figures, or other members. Includes misleading display names, fake credentials, and false claims of authority.
The warning, mute, and ban ladder. What each level means, what triggers it, and how long each action lasts. Gives members a clear picture of consequences before they act.
How a member can contest a moderation decision. Who to contact, the timeline for a response, and how decisions get reviewed. Reduces the volume of public complaints dramatically.
How members can report rule violations. The tools available (in-platform report button, DM to mods, email), what information to include, and what to expect after reporting.
Your pledge to enforce these rules consistently, review reports in good faith, and apply consequences fairly. Tells members the guidelines aren't just decorative.
Community management questions that actually come up
Full community guidelines coverage without paying $14 a month for a template.
| Feature | FreeTOS | Termly | TermsFeed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $14/mo | $9/mo |
| Signup Required | No | Yes | Yes |
| Community-Specific Document | Yes | No | No |
| Moderation Framework | Yes | No | No |
| PDF Download | Free | Paid plan | Paid plan |
| AI-Tailored Output | Yes | Template-based | Template-based |
| Instant Generation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Four places where your community guidelines need to live for maximum visibility and enforcement strength.
Pin your community guidelines as the first post or thread any new member sees. On Reddit, this is a pinned post at the top of the sub. On a forum, it's a sticky thread. This is the most important placement because it establishes context before someone has done anything that needs moderation.
Include the date the guidelines were last updated. It signals that they're actively maintained, not a document that was written once and forgotten.
On Discord, the standard approach is a dedicated rules channel near the top of the channel list, with posting disabled for regular members. The full guidelines go there. For Discord servers seeking verification or partnership, having a visible rules channel is a requirement, not a suggestion.
Use Discord's Server Guide or Onboarding feature to require new members to read the rules channel before they can participate. This dramatically increases how many people actually see the rules before their first message.
If your community has a website or forum home, the guidelines should be linked prominently from the homepage and stickied in every category header. This makes them findable for members who come looking for them and discoverable for moderators who need to cite a specific rule in an enforcement action.
A dedicated /guidelines or /rules URL is worth setting up. It's easier to reference in enforcement messages than a buried link in a settings menu.
If you have an email-based onboarding sequence for new members, include a link to your community guidelines in the welcome email. A line like "Before you post, take 2 minutes to read our community guidelines" with a direct link is enough. This creates an additional touchpoint and gives you email evidence that guidelines were shared.
For paid or gated communities, include an explicit acknowledgment step in the signup flow where members confirm they've read and agree to the guidelines before getting access.