Sr. Director of Product Management and Head of UX at Designing for Community : Mercilessly enforce one rule: “Be Friendly.”
Here’s another tip on how to approach the problem of Designing for Community.
Tip: Passionately, mercilessly commit to enforcing one rule: “Be Friendly.” Using this simple principle is how Javaranch built a large community. Now, you can still have a huge community without that rule, slashdot being a good example. But if you’re trying to inspire passionate users, enforcing a “Be Friendly” rule can be one of the best moves for long-term growth and retention. However, this does come at a cost – a small portion of your community is going to complain about the censorship you are enforcing and the “lack of free speech”, and they may leave. But then, you probably don’t want those people to be part of your community anyway.