Community and Social Media Guidelines and Policies

Once upon a time I kept a page on my old website of community guidelines. While great on the Google page rank, the links have rotted and it is time to start anew.  Plus now we have more than “community guidelines” — we also have social media policies!

Have additions and suggestions? Add them in the comments.

Sample Community Guidelines

The most important expression of these rules is the behavior and role modeling of the hosts. Many people never take the time to read the rules, but they read their manifestation every day in group behavior. Bottom line: live by your stated rules and guidelines! (small side note: note the legal language for commercial sites)

• Great School’s review guidelines (morphed out of SchwabLearning, now defunct)
• Social Edge online community guidelines
• WebMD’s community terms of use
• Disney’s “House Rules” morphed over time into Internet Safety Guidelines and now a site wide Rules of Conduct in their Terms of Use page.
• WorldsAway Guidelines for Community-Oriented Behavior. (Reprinted with permission from Fujitsu on Bruce Dammer’s site)
• http://fullcirc.com/wp/community/emindror.htm – The Electric Minds community rules developed by the community’s original founder, Howard Rheingold. Central to the rules are two tenets: “You Own Your Own Words” and “Assume Good Intent.”
• LambdaMOO Takes A New Direction, by the Wizards of LambdaMOO
• How Did the Moderation System Develop? from the slashdot FAQ. (found via Clay Shirkey at Shirkey.com)
• Our Replies to Our Critics from the Wikipedia FAQ(found via Clay Shirkey at Shirkey.com)
• Radio Free Monterey FAQ from Barbara Steinberg
• http://www.awakentech.com/AT/Awaken1.NSF/8796ff01afed38b788256487007339f2/eac0748b7e29764d8825649c007414ec!OpenDocument– Awaken.com’s community covenant.
• http://women2women.com/cgibin/WebX.cgi?98@@rules.html – Women2women’s user agreement.
• EdNA Policies – Going far beyond interaction agreements, this is a very thorough and well thought out set of policies and procedures for an Australian education organization. (Decommissioned June 2011, but there are still some good nuggets on the site as of Aug 2011)
• http://emoderators.com/moderators-homepage – has links to a variety of guidelines for email lists, copyright, etc.
• http://www.albany.edu/cpr/gf/group_facilitation_FAQs.htm – From the Group Facilitation listserv. Scroll down to “Groundrules”
• http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?StoneSociety describe an online “society” game that can serve as a set of rules. More abstract reading for those very interested in alternative approaches to online interactions.
• http://www.well.com/member_agreement.html – The Well’s member agreement.
• http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@.ee6e411 – Salon.com’s community standards. Salon shuttered the community in 2011.
• http://www.shpm.com/ppc/distance/ – The DistanceLearning List guidelines.
• Online Community Best Practices (2008) from  Jeremiah Owyang
• Regulating Behavior in Online Communities from Sara Kiesler, Robert Kraut,  Paul Resnick & Aniket Kittur (page saved 2010)
• Interfaith.org’s Guidelines

Sample Social Media Guidelines and Policies

While community guidelines normally look to address behavior across and within a group, social media policies tend to address individual behavior in a social context. Some come from organizations and also become company policy. The best ongoing list is here. I’ve been trying to bookmark new ones as I see them here. If you are crafting a new social media policy, you might enjoy the Social Media Policy Tool as a thought starter.

• Ford’s Social Media Guidelines
• IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines
• ASHA (nonprofit) social media guidelines
• Social Media Guidelines for Employees
• Intel Social Media Guidelines
• Blog Council Disclosure Best Practices Kit
• IBM Social Computing Policy
• Charlene Li’s Wiki of social Media Policies
• MindMap of Social Networking Policy Discussion
• Laurel Papworth: Social Media and PR Crisis
• Laural Papworth:  40 Social Media Policy Links 40 Guidelines for web 2.0
• Robin Broitman, Social Media Policy Super List
• Beth Kanter’s posts on social media policy
• Electronic Frontier Foundation How to Blog Safely about Work http://www.eff.org/wp/blog-safely
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation http://www.insidethecbc.com/bloggingrules interesting because this version caused World War III
• Opera http://my.opera.com/community/blogs/corp-policy/
• Harvard Law School Blogs Terms of Use  http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/terms-of-use/
• Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse http://www.sun.com/communities/guidelines.jsp and http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/blogs/BloggingGuidelines.pdf
• GM Motors Blogging Policies http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/about.html
• Media companies: For Journalists entering into public debate http://rhetorica.net/policy.htm
• IOC Olympic Athletes Blogging Policy http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_1296.pdf (PDF)
• BBC Staff Editorial Guidelines Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites  http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/advice/personalweb/blogging.shtml
• Cisco Internet Postings Policy http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/ciscos_internet_postings_policy/
• Dell Online Communication Policy http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/policy/en/policy?c=us&l=en&s=corp&~section=019
• Yahoo Staff Personal Blog Guidelines staff http://jeremy.zawodny.com/yahoo/yahoo-blog-guidelines.pdf
• Intel Social Media Guidelines http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm
• Greteman Group Blog Social Media Policy http://gretemangroup.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/social-media-policy/
• United States Airforce “new media and the airforce”  http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090406-036.pdf is a PDF
• US Navy  http://www.doncio.navy.mil/PolicyView.aspx?ID=789 click through » Download PDF
• DePaul University http://brandresources.depaul.edu/vendor_guidelines/g_socialmedia.aspx
• Hewlett Packard Blogging Code of Conduct http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html
• Chartered Institute of Public Relations Social Media Guidelines http://www.cipr.co.uk/socialmedia/
• Hill and Knowlton Public Relations Pledge for Bloggers http://armadgeddon.blogspot.com/2007/09/h-pledge-for-bloggers.html
• Feedster Corporate BloggingPolicy http://feedster.blogs.com/corporate/2005/03/corporate_blogg.html
• Gartner PUBLIC WEB PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES http://blogs.gartner.com/gartner-public-web-participation-guidelines/.
• Thomas Nelson BloggingPolicy http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/workingsmart/2005/03/corporate_blogg_1.html
• Plaxo’s Communication (Blogging) Policies http://blog.plaxoed.com/2005/03/29/plaxos-communication-policy/
• About.com generic ones http://humanresources.about.com/od/policysamplesb/a/blogging_policy.htm
• LiveWorld Social Media Content Guidelines http://socialvoice.liveworld.com/blog-entry/Bryan-Persons-Blog/Creating-Social-Media/1100000608
• The Blogging Church http://www.leaveitbehind.com/home/2005/04/fellowship_chur.html
• Walker Art New Media Initiatives wiki http://newmedia.walkerart.org/nmiwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WalkerBlogGuidelines
• Powerhouse Museum official blog policy   Download as a PDF
• Telstra 3Rs GuardRails http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/library/pdf/news/social-media-company-policy_final_150409.pdf
• Australian Public Service (Gov) protocols for online media participation  http://www.apsc.gov.au/circulars/circular088.htm
• New Zealand Government Principles for interaction with Social Media  http://www.ssc.govt.nz/display/document.asp?DocID=7160 and ParticipatoNZ wiki http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/participation/guide-to-online-participation.html