Appendix B of Managing Online Forums features blank, general templates for your user guidelines, staff member guidelines and contact templates. In order to make it easier for you to use them, a downloadable archive of the templates in .txt format has been made available.

Download the templates.

The user guidelines detail the types of behavior and participation that you allow or don’t on your forums. The staff member guidelines describe the responsibilities of the staff members on your community and how they should accomplish them. The contact templates are premade, ready to send messages for you to use when a member of your community has to be contacted in regard to a violation of your user guidelines. This helps to ensure consistent communication from staff member to staff member.

Ideally, you will want to come up with your own and, perhaps, use these as a basis. That said, you are welcome to use them as they are on your community. If you want to tell anyone about them, please refer them to this page.

Thank you for your interest in Managing Online Forums.

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