{"id":72,"date":"2013-05-01T05:38:54","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T05:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/?p=72"},"modified":"2013-05-01T05:39:24","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T05:39:24","slug":"how-to-reiterate-rules-in-your-online-community-welcome-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/how-to-reiterate-rules-in-your-online-community-welcome-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Reiterate Rules in Your Online Community Welcome Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 16px; line-height: 1;\">The majority of members who make up your community couldn\u2019t care less about comment policies and community guidelines which is why there are so many rule breakers. The truth is most click \u201cI agree\u201d without even know what it is they agree to. You don\u2019t have to point out the rules by lecturing. Simply have a paragraph on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/letter\/welcome-letter\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>welcome letter<\/strong> <\/a>linking to the appropriate content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Very few people will read your rules or guidelines for your online community word for word. In fact, those who do read them will scan in order to get the gist of what you\u2019re saying. It never hurts to remind anyone of the rules. Moreover, it holds you free from liability if you have to reprimand or ban a member who isn\u2019t playing by the rules. If anyone tells you he didn\u2019t know he couldn\u2019t say a certain thing or behave in a certain manner, you can point out that you sent him the guidelines in the welcome e-mail as well as posting them in the forum for all to see.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Pointing them to your comment policies, FAQs, and guidelines doesn\u2019t hurt. Like the regulations posted in your forum, not everyone is going to stop by and read them but pointing them out will encourage some of your newbie\u2019s to take a first or second list. While it\u2019s up to you to set rules and guidelines and past them in a prominent area, the onus of reading and behaving according to the rule falls on the member.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Lead up to it by saying, \u201cBefore you begin participating in community discussions, please read our comment policy\u201d or \u201cPlease see our Frequently Asked Questions page before writing to ask questions to be sure we haven\u2019t already answered them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The majority of members who make up your community couldn\u2019t care less about comment policies and community guidelines which is why there are so many rule breakers. The truth is most click \u201cI agree\u201d without even know what it is they agree to. You don\u2019t have to point out the rules by lecturing. Simply have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welcome-letter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iconlearnitonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}