As someone who’s been on forums of every stripe since the goddamn 80s, I can say with a great deal of experience that all good internet communities have just one single rule: “Don’t make us ban you.”

Anything else just invites edgy trolls and rules-lawyering.

Now don’t get me wrong, guidelines are good and necessary. Give people an idea of the kinds of thing you do and don’t want to see, and the way you will generally act in turn, because managing expectations is important.

But the moment you make hard-and-fast rules that you’re obliged to follow, people will make a point of bending you over them with edge cases and not cuddling afterwards, just because they can. They think denial-of-service attacks are just as hilarious against human systems as they are against software ones, if not moreso - or they do it to assert control as part of one personality disorder or another.

If you play their game, you will lose.

You need to have an admin-discretion clause, and not feel bad about invoking it whenever it’s the right thing to do.

Of course, this can lead to tyrannical asshole mods - if you have a mod team, you need to keep a close eye on it to prevent shitty personalities taking over in that domain. As the person that the buck stops with, if you can’t trust yourself with it, then the place is going to hell anyway.

Should you moderate like a bot? No.

I’m human, your human, the community is made up of humans. Act like a reasonable human, and yes, you get to define what is reasonable.

If bots could mod, we would just have them mod, but that would suck.

In terms of rule bending, if it’s in good faith then let it go. If you want to remind someone, that’s fine.

Folks will rage no matter what. Strict enforcement and you’re the fun police, lax and you’re letting it turn to shit.

Source: I was a mod on /r/soccer for a while.

You won’t win this “battle”, no matter what you do. Being a mod is a thankless job, and you’ll piss people off regardless of which side you take. The only thing you can do is be fair and balanced. List your rules out, enforce mostly to the rules, but add common sense, and regularly check in with the community to get feedback.

Don’t overthink it. I bend the rules in my communities quite often. The case that happens most often is somebody posting a duplicate of a news story. However, it is usually one or more days later and the new post usually picks up some comments from new people that didn’t comment on the previous post. I often let those slide. As long as people are trying to constructively engage in the community, then I give people the benefit of the doubt.

Ask your community members how they want it moderated. You may not get agreement, but you should get a feel for the vibe of it. 😁

Go with your gut.

If u ban someone for something that isnt a rule then i recon at least update the rules to reflect the change