How to approach creation of rules in an online community?
The only source of new rules is the real cases in your community.
A few rules are enough to make a group of several people follow some designed behaviors. As the size of the group grows, new types of interactions appear on the platform. Interactions that go beyond known behavioral patterns. This includes violations as well. If some behavior begins causing repeated violations or great negative consequences, you need to work on a rule regulating that behavior.
The rules of a community change throughout its life. You need to make sure that all rules are up to date by constantly adding new rules when needed, deleting unnecessary ones, and simplifying others. When working on new rules, be aware that it is very hard for many people to understand and internalize “rules in advance”. People tend to resist new rules for behaviors they have not personally observed on your platform. Arguments with “if” or “in another community” are not enough to perceive users in most cases. The best approach is to introduce a rule for a behavior that has already caused some damage so users understand the context and are ready to enforce the rule.
This is a fragment of a draft of the book “Lessons Learned While Working On Stack Overflow”. Read the full book on kindle or the paperback version.