Space rules

A Space's rules are a numbered list that members accept when they join. They are the Space's own house rules, and they sit alongside — never instead of — the platform-wide Community Guidelines.

Read a Space's rules#

Rules are on the Space, and any signed-in person can read them before joining — including a private Space's, whose card and rules stay readable without membership. This is what lets you decide whether to ask to join at all. Signed out, the Space's card is public but its rules are not.

If a Space has published nothing, it says so, and joining asks for no acceptance.

Write and publish rules#

Publishing rules needs the Space's settings capability, which means Admin or the owner.

1. Open Settings → Rules.
2. Add rule, or, while the list is empty, Start from a template for a starter set you can edit. Each rule has a short title and a longer explanation. A Space can publish up to 50.
3. Reorder them with Move up and Move down; the numbering is the order you set.
4. On the web, read the Preview — that is exactly what members see. While you have unpublished edits, the preview says so.
5. Publish.

Nothing reaches members until you publish.

Publishing is rate limited per Space: each publish asks every member to accept a new version, so a burst of republishing is refused.

What publishing does to members#

Publishing creates a new version and asks every member to accept it. The members who were already there get a week to do so; a banner in the Space explains it and takes them to the rules to accept. A member who has still not accepted a week after publication:

• keeps their access to everything already in the Space;
• is limited to read-only there, whatever their role, until they accept.

That is the entire consequence — nobody is removed, and nothing is deleted. The owner is never gated by their own rules.

The week exists so that publishing does not cut off people mid-conversation, so it belongs to the members who were there. Someone who joins afterwards without accepting has no week to inherit: they can read the Space and are asked to accept before writing in it.

An outstanding invitation is measured against the version being shown at the moment it is answered — if the rules change in between, the app asks the person to look again rather than admitting them under text they never saw. A pending join request is different: it is approved on the version the applicant accepted when they asked, so that a publication while they wait does not leave the moderator with a request they can only reject. If the rules moved on in the meantime, they join able to read the Space and are asked to accept the current rules before writing.

Clearing the rules#

Clear rules publishes an empty list. That removes the Space's rules and the accept-on-join requirement, so people join without being asked to agree to anything Space-specific. It is confirmed first.

Clearing does not undo past acceptances or the platform guidelines.

Writing rules people will read#

• Keep each rule to one idea, with a title someone can quote.
• Say what happens when a rule is broken, so moderation is not a surprise.
• Do not repeat the Community Guidelines. Severe reports go to Novagora regardless of what a Space's rules say; see Reporting content and getting help.