The 'Additional guidelines' section of your group settings is where you can set out your house rules and guidelines with regard to behaviour and content.
Creating guidelines ensures everyone is clear on what's acceptable and makes it easier to manage member behaviour.
Guidelines can be as long or short as you need, and adapted to match your tone of voice and house style. The following is a suggestion only.
Guild's guidelines - template copy
If you read only one rule, read this next one:
- Be kind
We aim to be a supportive group; many of us have many years of experience and are always happy to share our thoughts on topics around [insert topic]
This might include:
[insert details of the types of interactions/topics you want to encourage in the group]
The group host is xxxx. Don’t ever feel shy about reaching out to us in the group or by private message with any questions or suggestions.
The profile of members is typically:
- [Add details of the kinds of people you are hoping to see within the group]
- Let people know if you are happy for them to invite new members to the group (discoverable groups) or nominate new members by messaging the host (private groups)
We have a few requests in terms of the nature of contributions:
- No unsolicited selling or soliciting
- The host's decision on who can join, or who should be removed, is final
- We encourage discussion and debate and do not discriminate against any views but we reserve the right to remove any content based on the following (and remove members who repeatedly post this content):
- Confidentiality: All Guild members must abide by the Chatham House Rule. Further to that be mindful of people’s privacy: don’t share private information about other people without their permission.
- Offensive posts: Violent, obscene, profane, hateful, or discriminatory (on the basis of – race, colour, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, marital status, social class, age etc.) comments or content.
- Threats or defamation: Personal attacks or comments that threaten or defame any person or organisation.
- Illegal content: Comments that suggest or encourage illegal activity.
- Spam: Repetitive posts copied, pasted and posted, or continuous promotional content and references
- Deceptive or misleading posts
- Vulgar language: Posts/comments seen as offensive.
- Intellectual property rights: Share video content, links, photographs, and text if you have rights to it. If you don’t own it or don’t have permission, please don’t post it, but you can link out to it