The goal of this article is to inspire people with the idea of a community where users care about each other. This policy is the first step in shaping the culture of your community. By this article you want to find people who share the same views and will help you maintain a friendly atmosphere in the community. Don’t be afraid to sound a bit sentimental.
The policy can be described from two sides, either to describe what users should strive for or what they should avoid. People are drawn to good things. Describe positive aspirations first. Add examples of negative behavior as needed.
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The most important positive behaviors that can be mentioned are: assuming good intentions, being patient, being friendly and nice.
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Examples of unacceptable behavior: rudeness, name-calling, bigotry, inappropriate language or attention, harassment and bullying, passive aggression, spam and self-promotion.
Be-nice policy has many other names like “expected behavior” or “code of conduct”. In essence all these policies are about the same: convincing users to be kind to each other, to feel compassion and empathy for others. You can have several similar sections that explain the idea of being kind from different angles. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of good attitude towards each other.
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.