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Top Tips for Writing Your Own Rules
Rules don’t just help encourage positive behavior, they also prevent negativity from spreading as your community grows.
- Simplify Your Rules: Keep your language simple, clear, and direct.
- Don't Get Too Specific: The further into the weeds you get, the more people can try to find ways to act around it while still “following the rules.”
- Emphasize the Spirit: Sometimes, a user won’t break a written rule but the spirit of your rules. It’s important to use your guidelines to promote the right kind of behavior too.
- Know When to Adapt: If changing your rules will make your community a happier and more supportive place, do it!
Be Flexible and Unafraid to Enforce the Rules
Once you’ve written your rules, it’s important to enforce them consistently.
While it may feel uncomfortable at first, enforcing your rules tells your community, “we’re here, we care about you, and we’re going to keep this community safe.”
Before you grab your ban hammer, try to remember the human side of community moderation. Being able to talk to users, de-escalate arguments, and give second chances before escalating things is key to a healthy community.
Remember, people make mistakes, and a good community can help change people for the better too.
When to Escalate
If you’ve tried working with them directly and had no luck, it’s time to escalate things. You have a few key tools available in this situation: Time Out, kick, or ban.
- Time Out: This will temporarily prevent a user from interacting in a server—this includes sending or reacting to messages and joining voice channels or video calls.
- Kick: This will remove a member from your server but leave them with the ability to rejoin at a later date. They won’t be notified of the kick.
- Ban: This removes a member from your server and stops them from ever joining again.
To action a member on your server...
- Go to Server Settings and find Members listed under User Management.
- Click on the three dots next to a user.
- Choose any of the three options: Time Out, kick, or ban.
Or you can right-click on the member you want to ban from your server!
What kind of content should I ban for?
Unfortunately, there’s no hard-and-fast rule here; unacceptable conduct or content will vary for every server.
However, if there are people constantly posting content that directly breaks your server rules or Discord’s Terms of Service, it may be time to remove them from your community. For more information, check out our Community Guidelines.
Whether through an escalation process or a ban for extreme rule-breaking, content that crosses a line should be moderated and – if necessary – banned. You may also want to report this behavior to our Trust and Safety team so we can take further action.
“What can I do to deal with users who are not technically breaking rules, but are problematic?”
Again, this is where it’s important to be human and engage with the user to try and stop the behavior before you need to ban or kick them.
- Lead by Example: Encourage your team to act in a way that is positive for the community’s health; others will follow.
- Enable Member Reporting: Make sure your community feels they can come to you for help.
- Practice De-Escalation: Foster a positive environment that allows for second chances and reform in your community. The Time Out feature is a great tool to help.
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