Curating Positive Spaces

In the Loft, October 11, 2026.

I have no particular authority to be saying this, I don't run any large communities or anything, and maybe that matters, but I will share my opinion anyway - I think enforcing positivity/friendliness/acceptance is really the only rule you should need or should have in online communities.

"Nothing less than positivity, respect, acceptance, friendliness, and helpfulness will be tolerated" is the wording I use. I think it adequately sets the tone that people will actually understand.

When you have giant lists of rules, nobody really reads them, and nobody wants to say "uhm actually that violates rule #7". Even though these are the rules that are supposed to be the foundation for your space! The thing everyone understands and abides by, the fundamental principles holding your community up! So just have one, and make it a good one. Most rules lists are like "use common sense, speak in English, be respectful, don't start drama, staff hold final say", I don't think any of these things need to be said, and they distract from what you're actually trying to accomplish. You're trying to convey the tone to everyone.

Moderating is hard, knowing where to draw the line is hard, but it's pretty easy to tell if someone is being a unkind, unfriendly, or unaccepting. It's easy to point out, it's easy to call someone out doing it on accident, and its easy to see that someone is doing something that you simply don't do in your community. "We don't act in that way", "We don't do that kind of thing here". If you tell them to stop and they don't, then just kick them out. Nothing more really needs to go into it. There's not really a lot of nuance. Misunderstandings happen, but they're pretty easy to deal with. Maybe you say something harmful and don't know it, now you can be corrected.

I stole this wording from the Clojure community, which is truly just the most fascinating place I've ever seen. The creator of Clojure set the tone for how Clojure is talked about, and we still uphold that to this day. The Clojure community is still fucking awesome, and we all know this is the way we operate. We're able to uphold these values because they're pretty hard to disagree with and have clearly led to a wonderful place.

I think if you are going to have one rule, this ought to be it. It clearly doesn't come out of laziness like "don't be a dick " or "use common sense". It's framed pretty clearly, I don't think people tend to talk in this way, so it stands out.

I definitely don't think communities of cool people just find themselves in existence, I think they need to be enforced, just as Clojure's was. When you're passionate about something, you find yourself in multiple communities about that same thing, with large overlaps of the same people, and yet they have such drastically different vibes. I think people just look around at how things are and try to mimic that behavior as much as possible, it's really a self-fulfilling prophecy. I love positive communities, and yet when I find myself in a negative place, I adopt that negativity, even though I don't want to. It's like wild social blending in above your own beliefs.

Curate positive spaces, they're nice places to be.