House Rules That Actually Held Up

I started with fifteen house rules. They were thorough. They were fair. They covered spoilers, politics, backseat gaming, links, self-promotion, emote spam and the correct way to greet a new face. Nobody read them, and the moderators kept a cheat sheet.

Two years later, five rules are left. Those five are the only ones that survived contact with a real Friday night.

What survived

1. Be kind to the person typing next to you. It sounds like a poster. It works because it's a test you can apply in a second. Would I say it to the person two seats down? If not, don't.

2. No spoilers without a warning. Single-player stories are why half of us are here. A one-word warning costs nothing, and it has stopped more arguments than any sanction.

3. Backseat gaming only if asked. The rule is short on purpose. Viewers who love the game want to help. Helping is welcome the moment someone says "any ideas?".

4. One link at a time, from a regular, never from a stranger. This is the spam rule, and it's the least friendly one, and the one I'm glad of every month.

5. Moderators are volunteers. If a mod asks you to stop, you stop, and you can argue in the follow-up thread tomorrow.

What didn't

The ten that failed share a flaw. They were specific where they should have been general, or general where they should have been specific. "No negativity" was too vague to enforce and too broad to be fair, because a bad review of a game isn't negativity, it's a review.

"Keep emote spam to under five" required a moderator to count. Nobody counts at midnight.

How to write one

A rule that holds up usually has three traits:

• It can be checked in under five seconds by someone who's tired

• It names the behaviour, not the person

• It has a one-line reason attached

If the mod needs a flowchart, the rule is already dead.

The reason is the part people skip. "No links from new accounts, because we've been raided before" does something a bare ban can't: it tells the newcomer you aren't picking on them.

Enforcing without anger

Three steps, in order. A quiet reminder in chat. A timeout of ten minutes, with a short note. A ban only after both. Almost nobody gets to step three, and the ones who do usually wanted to.

We write the reason down every time, in a shared note the mods can see. It's dull and it's the reason nobody has accused us of favouritism.

One last thing

Review your rules every six months. Strike anything nobody has used. Reword anything that has to be explained. The shorter the list, the more seriously people take it. Mine fits on a phone screen now, and so far, that's the best moderation tool I own.

Names, places and events in this demo are fictional.