The nature of online communities - Part 1 - The Rules

I think the fascinating thing about communities is how they are formed. One of these elements that I seek to understand and would love to discuss are the rules that exist at the beginning of a community, why these rules exist and how they evolve over time.

Here are some questions that vex me.

- Where do these rules come from?
- Do they evolve over time if so why?
- Do the rules reflex the rules of the physical location where the founders exist ie could you find the similar groups of people from different physical locations have different rules?
- Do online rules find themselves affecting the offline rule set?
- Do these rules apply to anonymous as well as known community members?

We all have rules that we live by, some imposed by the laws of the land, some by our work, and even more by the groups of people we spend time with.

I think that online communities generally do not get the budget to review the options for community rules and opt for the "obvious ruleset" ie the ones they know. Now there are no rights and wrongs here. In fact which rules should they pick. Are there a standard set of rules we can use for communities? As we know from regulation, rules can get really complicated, and once they get too difficult then we need people to understand them, which I feel defeats the object.

We have a starting simple set of rules at Social Media Professional, take a look in Resources. I would like us to review these, so maybe us discussing a standard set of generic rules for communities is a good start for us a community together.

What do you think?