There once was a post on LessWrong asking why so many bans? The OP of that post complained of, among other things, being punished despite not having broken any rules that they knew about before taking the action they got punished for. I started to write a comment, which then ballooned out of scope. The following is based on my own experiences trying to write rules.

1.

I claim the ideal rules are concise, comprehensive, and clear[1]. In practice, I think that we usually have to pick two.

Concise: Ideal rules are short. You can read or refer to them easily.

Comprehensive: Ideal rules include everything relevant. There aren't gaps.

Clear: Ideal rules have one interpretation. There's no ambiguity.

If you're running LessWrong, then "Don't be a jerk, talk about things related to rationality" is a concise and fairly comprehensive set of rules. It's just not a very [...]

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The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.