There’s two kinds of rules in my opinion. On one hand you have the rules that are just understood, without having to be talked about. On the other hand you have rules that you just tell everybody, and with that you show people rules that they really should care about. The problem here is, if you explicitly State rules to people, then you partly seem to expect people to break these rules.
If you take a look at sites like 4chan, you can see that even without any rules whatsoever, there still is at least some level of decency with most interactions. Of course there’s a lot of Filth and really non-decent Behavior going on on 4chan, but that is not the point.
I myself am a believer in humans generally being decent. I don’t mind people being banned for going against the sites ‘community code’ - and it’s good that it’s laid out clear. The way that this rubs me the wrong way is that rules that are front and center, shoved in your face, can kind of act like ‘gatekeeping’.
The rules for beehaw are actually well-stated, in a way that shows what they want to go for. But for example a standard top level rule on mastodon instances is ‘No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or casteism.’
Sure, the intention behind it is fine. I know where they want to get at. But these words are, currently, all very charged. Does a guy saying ‘I do not like having that many foreigners in my neighbourhood’ constitute xenophobia? You don’t have context - maybe the neighbourhood the person lived in has a lot of people living there that all speak a different language - so the person feels ‘left out’ of the community. That has nothing to do with the fact that they are foreign people - just with the fact its a foreign language. What about stating criticism on your countries’ immigration politics? At what point, exactly, does this go from ‘civilised discussion’ to ‘xenophobia’?
I’m going with xenophobia as the example as I think it’s the most easily illustrated here, but this goes for all rules.
I have to say, the first time I read those rules on my mastodon instance, I was put off. The mere presence of that rule kind of indicated to me that this was made for a specific group of people, that I do not really belong to - judging from past experiences. This turned out not to be the case, and I like interacting with people on mastodon.
I would just like to have people assume other people to be decent beings. It is good to have rules written down, to accurately pass judgement on whether something is allowed or not allowed - but shoving them into people’s faces when they join might put people off.
Tldr: it’s less about having rules, it’s about stating rules in a way that they’re clear, not open to interpretation, and that the rules are relatively ‘clear’ of ideology - so that the place the rule applies to is welcoming.