Why have rules?
Good community rules should: encourage desirable behaviours to help your community meet their objectives. They should also discourage negative behaviours.
Every member of the platform signs up to the platform terms of use and ground rules when they join.
However, your workspace might benefit from developing a tailored set of community membership rules to compliment the ground rules.
How to develop your workspace specific rules
They should be clearly written, concise and inspiring. It should be easy to understand the implications. You should consider the types of people involved in your community, e.g., if you have patient or public representatives.
Step 1
Start by writing out what you want your community to achieve together. Is it to provide peer support? Is it to contribute to ideas?
Next, write down ideal behaviours that make meeting these goals easier. Imagine what your community looks like at its best.
Keep in mind the following values that are common to many collaboration platforms:
- Be professional
- Be safe/trustworthy
- Be kind/respectful
- Be legal
- Be inclusive
Inclusion is a value that is particularly central to the Futures mission. We believe that diversity is a power for collaboration, innovation, creativity and generating new ideas. Make sure everyone knows they are welcome in your community by upholding this value.
Inclusion means making sure that there is equal access to resources and opportunities for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalised, which can include physical and mental disabilities as well as background, experience, role type, level of digital maturity and more.
Step 2
Identify important negative behaviours:
- Draw out key points from the platform terms of use, e.g., no spam/selling of products or services
- What other behaviours should your members avoid? Look again at your objectives.
- Example: a small number of communities wish to limit what members share outside of their Futures workspace. To support collaboration and knowledge sharing, there are no limitations to this in the Futures terms of use. Workspace teams with this use case will therefore need to explicitly add this to their community membership rules. However, please note that all information shared on Futures is classified as OFFICIAL and subject to FOI requests.
Step 3
Explain what happens if people don’t follow the rules. This should not be heavy handed given the rules are mainly values to guide behaviour.
However, for some negative behaviours covered by the formal terms and conditions of the platform (e.g. privacy, security), you can explain that the workspace manager would get in contact with the member. If the matter isn’t resolved, the member’s account can be closed.
You could give an email address for members to flag up concerns about behaviour, suggestions about the rules and to highlight good practice.
Step 4
Think about how to frame your rules e.g. A community code of conduct with dos and don’ts or bullets on what being part of this community means.
Make sure you get your tone of voice right: be direct but not bossy; be human not corporate; use plain English not technical language.
Engage members
Share your draft with members and get their input. Rules are more likely to be upheld if your community owns them and can easily see how they reflect their values.
Where should community rules go?
We recommend that you do one or more of the following:
- Post the rules in a forum discussion and pin this post to the top of your forum
- Put them on your homepage, or clearly link to them from there
- Wherever the most connectivity happens in your Futures community
- Link to them in your welcome email to new members
What does a good practice template look like?
- A sentence or two on the ambition/goals of the workspace
- A sentence or two to give an overview of the community ‘code of conduct’ e.g. Being a part of this community means behaving (add key points)
- Dos: highlight a small number of important behaviours e.g. 3-6
- Don’ts
- Link to the terms of use
Is there a good practice draft available?
Yes, the Futures team has produced a draft below that you can amend to reflect your goals and the behaviours that are most important for your community.
Draft community membership rules
Introduction
Our community membership rules set out our values - what we do, and don’t, stand for – and therefore how we as members of the insert the name of workspace/community will work together when using the Futures platform. We want everyone to participate and feel comfortable as they share, connect and learn together.
They sit alongside the formal terms of use that members sign when they join.
Our goals
Insert sentence or two on the collaboration goal(s) of the community e.g. sharing information, resources, intelligence and knowledge; listening and engaging; harnessing collective knowledge and insights; supporting people to connect; building momentum; enabling people to get organised with each other
Dos for successful collaboration
We actively work to be a vibrant and safe community that supports and encourages everyone.
- Be curious and inquisitive: explore the workspace; learn from one another and build new knowledge. No idea is a bad idea.
- Be active: give and get; sign in regularly and use this workspace to find knowledge and make connections; contribute to discussions and share your work, thoughts and ideas with other members.
- Be supportive: connect with others, help and encourage them; contribute knowledge and expertise generously. Bring in new members to help build momentum and critical mass of the community.
- Be respectful: be considerate of other members and respect others for who they are and for their knowledge, skills, views and experience. Add to ideas, don’t criticise them. Communicate as professionally as you would in a face-to-face interaction and be aware of how your interactions may affect others. Treat other members how you’d like to be treated.
- Be safe: take responsibility for all content you contribute and consider responsibly the information you share, and when you share beyond Futures. Be conscious of how you contribute to a culture of learning, transparency and psychological safety.
Don’ts for successful collaboration
- Don’t be hierarchical: the strength of our community, innovation and creativity comes from diversity. We break down barriers across professions, places and levels and act as peers.
- Don’t expect the community to just happen overnight: we will work together to grow our community and shape our use of the Futures platform.
- Don’t forget to celebrate successes and recognise the contributions of members of your community. Recognise the feeling of belonging from the conversations we have, from the contributions we make, and the support we receive from others.
Some basics:
- Do not disclose personal information.
- Do not share sensitive, confidential or commercial information or patient identifiable data.
- Do not advertise products and services.